The Way Things Turn Out
by jaybird17
Summary: Neck-deep in an unnaturally consuming depression, Danny Fenton finds himself locked in a battle against time, drugs, himself, his fate, and a villainess trying to play God, all for a love he can never give up on.
1. Chapter 1

Hey y'all thanks for giving me a chance and reading! I hope you really enjoy. If you do, lemme know please. And if you don't, also (kindly) let me know. I'm writing here to grow! Anyway, I'm not going to leave you messages before and after every chapter, just here. So, for the record I don't own Danny Phantom or any of the characters. However! If you feel like you've read this story before, you might have...well, sorta. See, a long while back I wrote and published The Way Things Turn Out as a fanfic. But, after losing my practice in writing for a few years, I decided that it was silly to let something I loved so much go. This is my same, original work, but TOTALLY re-edited, and re-written, many years of training later. Again, I hope you enjoy, review, and have a blessed day!

Sweat dripped from Danny's colorless face, heat soaking in and setting him ablaze. Distraught, he lie in his bed, curled up in a tight ball. Both knees clutched close to his chest where his heart murmured of relentless torment. Countlessly, as incurable hiccups, a soft mist of blue-green pushed through his mouth. He lied still there.

The chiming of a doorbell resonated from downstairs, followed by several heavy knocks and an, "I'll get it," from Jazz. Muffled voices followed the sound of an opening front door.

He wasn't in the mood to talk or see anyone. He wasn't in the mood for anything at all. His deepest desire was to disappear completely from existence. He had considered suicide, but knew it would do no good. He would simply become full ghost and find an eternity under the pummeling hands of a company of revenge seeking enemies. He also took into consideration just remaining invisible and intangible always. That wasn't the answer either. He would still be miserable and alone. He would also have to bear watching his friends and family live on through his loss and then the rest of their days. There was simply nothing he could think of to do, no loophole, nothing but the company of hope in the impossible. It would come to him. It was his passionate desire to never have been born. The one thing he craved he believed would never be his, which further drove this need to be forever gone.

"Danny, can we come in?" Tucker asked from outside the door.

He answered nothing.

"It's us Danny. Sam and Tucker. Are you there?"

"Hello?" His door cracked slightly open. Quickly, he made himself invisible. Sam peeped her head in and at the sight of his imageless figure lumped beneath the sheets, Danny realized the flaw in his reflexed reaction. He surrendered to their visit and became visible again.

"Danny…"Sam gasped, looking in on her best friend. The bleak sight robbed her of breath and wit. "Oh, Danny…how did it get this far?"

The girl stepped in revealing ectoplasm stains on her clothes and in her hair. As she sat on the edge of his bed, Tucker entered the room, also stained with the ghostly green.

Sam placed a hand on Danny's shoulder. His eyes closed and let out a long slow breath, like a runaway train steadying to a stop. Her touch cooled his burning body.

"Danny can you hear me?" She asked, trying to hide the beginnings of a wild cry. "Tell me you can hear me…please." A few heavy sobs were choked back, and as she dried her eyes with tight blinks her hand slid up his neck and into his wet hair where she wriggled her fingers, sending chills down the boy's spine. The roasting fever he had been experiencing only moments ago dripped down to sharp, stinging normality. Something in him hated how she could so easily tame his wildfires, yet, at the same time, he cherished every goose-bumped blessing of Sam's iced touch.

Each recent day, miserable Danny had sunken deeper and deeper into sudden, and consuming depression, and today, it had seemed as though he'd drowned. Things were worse than doctors or physiatrists had ever seen, much less had a cure for, and everyone seemed to care more than anything to pull him out, except for he who wished to delve deeper, and surrender into the mental fires burning up any will for life.


	2. Chapter 2

Danny still lie in silence, Sam twiddling nervously in his hair, and Tucker hanging by the door.

"Danny…I know you can hear me" Sam whispered, beginning an attempt at psychology. Normally Jazz's thing, the darkness exhausted goth girl figured perhaps having it come from one least infamous for it may better attune his ears for the truth in it. Her voice steadied itself, and marched out to meet Danny's defenses with smooth consistency. "Look, right now probably isn't the best time for ghosts to be attacking, I know. We weren't going to bother you; we attempted to handle it on our own, but things got a little bit out of hand... Danny, we don't have your powers, and even if we did this ghost is so powerful. We've never battled with this one before, and she brought with her an army of ghosts. Everyone is fighting for their lives, and they none are standing a chance. Danny, they need you-we need you. If nothing is done soon, Amity Park is going to fall into nothing."

"Why would you put your self in that danger?"

He'd finally spoken. His voice rasped with aching, dry scratches, and came out in a whisper hardly even audible, but, he'd spoken. She could only make progress with conversation starting.

"What is wrong with you two? Where do you find the gaul to try such a stupid thing? I'd think you'd have common sense to not go out there by yourself!"

He was sitting straight up now, kindling thrown back into his bright, frightened flames. For a moment, Sam paused. Fear rushed within her veins and surged though her body. She hadn't been prepared for him to yell.

"Did you get hurt?" He asked, breaking she shocked stillness. Tucker looked up from his shoes and glanced to Sam. She returned the look, and the two turned to searching their laces for a suitable answer.

"What happened out there? Are you alright?" Danny's scorn-filled voice managed to choke out while fighting back a loud, cold, concern in his chest.

"We'll be fine…" Tucker said, and Danny rolled his angry eyes to him over a cold shoulder.

"What do you mean you'll be fine? You shouldn't have even been out there! Honestly, what was going though your minds? I go out there and get beat to a pulp-I have ghost powers-you guys don't. Do you even see at all how reckless with your lives you've been? Why didn't you at least tell me, or come get some ghost hunting equipment? Why would you do something like that? I just don't get it…"

Sam gently closed her eyes, her own fire lighting up at Danny. Her mind couldn't fathom how he could, with all his powers, be so pointlessly reckless with his own life. Her mind ran laps in frustration, and stopped dead in the bitter accusation that his sufferings were only an act for attention. Horrible guilt for what she had thought washed out all anger, and though Danny hadn't heard her thoughts, she threw her arms open, like two tight-locked gates relieved of their bonds, enclosing them around Danny who sat in his own state of shock. His stomach twisted with nausea, his head pounding like a worn drum.

The sickly teen didn't return her hug for the shrieking inner conscience that ever so constantly lit up his mental fires warning against the dangerous nature of affectionate behaviors.

Sam pulled back and smiled at him, his baby blue eyes shining with confused, exhausted innocence. He let his inner conscience speak through him all that it had been asking him.

"Why do we even try at it? Why do we risk our lives for the people that hate us? Tell me, why do we save the jerks that try to destroy us. What's the point in shoving ghosts into a thermos only to have them come back out and start it all over?" The words spewed from his mouth.

Danny's white hot rage relit within him, and he was again put to the scalding flame. Emotion boiled within him. So much that his throat became dry, and so ran his thoughts. "For the same reason you always have," Sam said, resuming her first therapy shot.

"You try to succeed, and you have every time. Do you even realize that you are the most powerful ghost out there? Danny, you have vanquished all who come against you. You've proven invincible. You risk your neck for those that hate you because it's the right thing to do. When Dash is wailing on you don't you like for someone to come help you and stick up for you? It's all one and the same. People make mistakes, and you save the jerks that want you destroyed because they are mistaken people too. You do it because it's right. You do it because everyone needs someone to rescue them when they are helpless. Everyone needs someone to depend on, Danny. And believe me, I need you to be that someone, we all do, okay?" She paused for a moment and took several heavy breaths, unable to hold back her emotions anymore.

Danny looked over to his best friend. He had never seen her cry before and it touched somewhere deep inside his soul. Sam returned his gaze. He looked like a fallen angel. As she read deep in his eyes, she saw all the sadness, heaviness, grief, loneliness, confusion, darkness and burden of the world.

"So many others try," She began again, "But you, you Danny are different. Special and unique. They are all the same in the sense that they are blind to real light, real truth and hope. I'm telling you, you are so different from them. Don't choose to become blind to it like this, please. You have chosen to show mercy and love to everyone. The ones that deserve it, and the ones that really need a good smack in the face. You give everyone a second chance Danny, no matter what they've done, who they are, or what they will do. Don't you ever give up, don't deprive yourself of the very sanctuary that you provide. We all need a second chance every once and a while. People out there are desperate, and if you don't help them nobody will. With out you there is no hope for any of us. So, even though you fall too, by responsibility of seeing how to really live and love, you have to get back up."

For a moment he stared into her brilliant eyes trying to read her like she read him. It came so simple to her. She opened him up with her words and read him like she was reading her Goth poetry. How was it so easy to her? He thought and stared harder and deeper. Tucker shifted uncomfortably in his stance at the door.

Danny wanted so badly to hold her and prove to her that he was the hero she thought he was, that he was her someone. But the more he let himself care about her, the more of a downfall he would have when the his relief, his answer, came to take him away from life.

"Sam," He finally said. "Not this time. Not anymore, I'm done Sam. Down and out."

"What?" Tucker exclaimed, astonished that his friend had felt no impact. "Danny-" Tucker stepped in only to shoved out by a fiery friend.

"No! Don't you get it? I'm done. People should look after their own fates. Take care of themselves. Do whatever it takes. If they can't then they're lost to their own miserable deaths."

"Hey," Sam restarted, this time a little more gently then her previous scolds. "These people that you say deserve to die miserably love you."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"They cheer you on, some even idolize you. Because you saved them, or someone they care about. They love Danny Phantom, the hero. We all need you."

"I'm not just Danny Phantom! Who is to say this is who I am? I'm not cut out to be some hero. The accident that gave me my powers was just that-an accident. There's no fate, or mark on me that qualifies me to be this Danny Phantom that I've been pushed into being. It's not who I am. Not now and not when I die. I'm done Sam!"

"Don't say that." Sam was at her feet, in his face, at the mention of the thought. "Do you know how many people want to be you? What is this fate talk? If anything, fate chose you through your accident. You didn't ask for ghost powers, but you were given them because you were destined for them, for half a life lived as Danny Phantom. But people love and praise you the same way they do as to when you in ghost mode, you just don't see it or hear it. But it's there. I know people love Danny Fenton, and they always have, even before you were half ghost. I know that more than any other truth I can promise. With out you so much falls apart...please, don't let us crumble like this."

Tucker smiled wide.

Sam followed suit under the notion that she may have reached him.

Danny slowly, at his own pace turned to look at her. Mascara and eyeliner fused with tears, leaving long black streaks all down her face. He lifted a quivering hand and placed it on her cheek. She closed her eyes and embraced this endearing move. Her heart raged for him, and his everything raged against himself. His stomach knotted, his head throbbed and crippling fever overtook him as his inner conscience wailed.

_What on earth are you doing Fenton? Your letting her get in your head, she's just a girl and she doesn't know what she's saying. _Danny's head began to ache further from the yelling of two another voice from his heart combatting the inner conscience, almost like the little angel and the little devil that appear on your shoulders. _But she's not just a girl! She really does care and has a point. No, she'll ruin everything! She doesn't understand. She can't see past her selfish want of you to see what you really need. If you really love her, then you'll let her go._ _You can't give in. You will never have her. Stand strong, that's all you can do and soon you'll be gone from this confusion._

Danny recoiled his hand from her face. He hardened as rust on lack-luster silver and became harsh. "I said no more. That's final. I don't want to be Danny Fenton or Danny Phantom anymore." His heart pleaded against his mind's actions, _Oh please, this one last time let me put a smile on her face, that beautiful smile._

"I'll finish the battle now then I'm through." He revised, hoping it would please enough, "But you have to promise me that you'll never bother me about it again. Deal?" His heart sang as a grin crept up on a tear stricken face. He decided in this moment that any battle would be worth fighting for such an untouchable, irreplaceable feat of beauty. But it was not only a grin of joy it was a smirk of defeat and triumph that curled there on her lips. For Sam knew it would surely not be the last time. In that moment, she had planted a seed in his head. He would water it with his own thought and someday, soon, it would grow into a strong and powerful tree, standing up mightily against anything it faced.

It wasn't the last time at all and she knew it from the deepest depths of her goth black heart.

"Deal."


	3. Chapter 3

Sam once again pulled him close in a tight hug. Danny closed his eyes in a longing to interlace their arms, press his chest close to hers to let their hearts beat against each other. But his arms hung at his side and she hugged a stiff statute while his inner conscience shouted at him. The relentless rant amplified in his empty head; his temples surging in sharp hot pain and no other thought or voice of reason could be heard. Phasing though his bed and down into his parent's basement lab he left Sam clutching nothing but air. Tucker sat awkwardly as he watched the toughest person he knew sit on a bed, hug herself, and cry. Her body trembled as a fragile leaf that wind had torn away, and she rocked slightly and slowly back and forth, falling in the gusts control, turning fail and brown without her life source. It was then that Tucker realized, Sam's claim that everything was collapsing had not simply been a tool to inspire Danny to action.

"Um…." He stuttered, unable bear watching her like this. He slowly began to walk her way. "Hey…Hey it's going to be alright."

A gentle hand rested onto her shoulder, matched by a violent recoil and a glare up at this gesture, as if it was Tucker's fault for their situation. Her mouth opened as if to speak but nothing but heavy breaths escaped until she finally managed to choke out, "Is it?"

All he could think was yes, that it would be fine, in his need to deny their dark state.

"I'm so scared." She muttered in her silent answer. "What if," she sobbed hard, then continued, "What if, when he goes to fight out there...he can't do it because, because he's so depressed. He's so run down and weak. I-I don't think he can handle it. Tucker if something happens to him-if he gets hurt, seriously hurt out there... _I_ won't be able to handle it."

For once, Tucker had nothing to say. The room fell into quiet hopelessness again.

"Sam," Tuck finally whispered, piercing the silence, "Tell him." She quickly shot an are-you-kidding-me look over to him. "You've got to, because if he does get hurt..."

Her swollen eyes looked to her empty, ectoplasm stained hands.

"He'd want to know. Sam, he wants to know. Here and now, he wants to know. I promise, there is nothing he wants to hear more."

"I just can't."

"You might be the only thing that could save him."

"Don't talk like that! I was just concerned that he might really get hurt and you put him on death row! Like there is no hope when there is, give it time! Geez!"

"No, Sam I just meant-"

"No...no, I know what you meant. I'm sorry I yelled, okay? You're right. He _is_ on death row. He wants to be there. I just refuse to make myself believe it. I'm sorry, I don't really take kindly to reality slapping me in the face." She looked out the window. "Oh my."

The scene was bleak. Soot and lava covered most everything in the city, and as far as the eye could be seen through a thick black cloud of smoke looming over the city. In random flashes of light a ghost would be caught in the luminescence of blazing weapons. Screams echoed in the silence of terrified minds. People thrashed violently about the streets to avoid the molten death approaching them, like someone ripped open the earth and let it's unending burn pour out on to the people of Amity Park.

Sam's tears stopped, but breaths shrunk in depth and quickened in pace. _Where is Danny? _She thought, her mind then spiraled into what-ifs and tragedy terrors.

"Danny!" Sam paused, scared at hearing her own voice. "Uh, sorry, that was supposed to stay inside my thoughts."

Tucker let out a fearful laugh and a crooked smile formed on his lips.

"What?" Danny answered as he run into the room. He glowed of his ghostly form but with almost every ghost-hunting weapon, and everything else he could carry on his small, already defeated-looking frame. "What is it?"

"Um, I just didn't know where you were, what was taking so long." Sam said, smiling at the sight of him. "I thought something may have happened."

"Oh. Well here." He tossed them each a Specter Defector and a Fenton Ghost Peeler. "They're only for emergency. Tucker, when I leave go straight upstairs and turn on the ghost shield. Don't leave the house until I come back for you."

Tucker turned his face to Sam, his eyes widening with raised brow and tightened lips. She sighed.

"You have to take care of each other, and Jazz. I don't know why there haven't been any attacks in here with the shield down. I guess we just got lucky…" Danny's voice trailed away looking to each of his friends having their own conversation in facial expressions.

"Danny." Sam stifled out. Tucker's smile became unnaturally big. "Danny, I've got to talk to you."

"Oh, alright, could it wait till I get back?"

"Um, no..."

Curiosity somehow slipped a smirk onto Danny's pale face and raised a single brow up to better see into her intentions.

"Well…um…I-I" As hard as she tried she couldn't find the words.

He took her hands and made sure she found honesty in his eyes before asking, "What is it?"

Her purple mouth quivered as her lashes blinked fervently and heart fluttered with nervous delight.

"Sam," Danny almost cooed. "You can tell me anything."

The walls crashed in and glass exploded from every direction. The trio fell to the floor as shards scattered over them. Thick black smoke clouded the room. They coughed and choked for clean oxygen. Heat from outside flooded the room and real flames danced on the edges of blasted dry wall strewn about.

Danny pulled Sam close to him, holding her tightly in his protection. "Tucker!" He called out.

"I'm over here," the pair heard though the smoky distance. "I'm ok!"

The surrounding blackness cleared very little, but enough to see the ghostly glow of four emerging figures.


	4. Chapter 4

"Phantom," a voice called.

Danny gulped what little moisture remained in his dry mouth. As his stomach began to tie itself in knots, the pressure on his temples slowly dissipated into what felt like a warm, sweet massage to his mind and thoughts.

_Stand to meet her, _the inner conscience whispered. He slowly stood in the ashen remain of his wall and windows.

"Yes." Danny answered, forcing his voice to sound a lot stronger than he felt.

"So here you are?" The voice became friendlier with each word and step forward.

"Who are you?" He asked bravely. Sam stared up at him, praying that he feel no pain, that he be safe and strong.

The smoke cleared. There, in the thick, swirling air, stood a relatively tall ghost girl, about seventeen in age, and three accomplices. A grin curved neatly on her ink colored lips. Wicked, but somehow sympathetic and sweet. Her tall black boots stretched up her tan legs where they nearly met a mid-thigh mini skirt. The pitch scrap of material was tattered and torn at the edges and across it were three belt like strips of leather with little silver spikes jutting out. Her top was blood red, as were her eyes. It too was frayed on it's edges, showing her stomach off to the world. Long fishnet gloves covered most of her arms, on which sat three more of the spiked leather straps. Lastly, a long midnight black cape flowed from her shoulders, down her back and trailed behind her boots as she clicked along.

Danny stared at her. Simply staring. His eyes glued to her and searching her over endlessly. Something was irresistibly alluring about her. Something pulled his attention solely to her focus. Nothing nearly romantic, but something. He was utterly entranced by her, and sought through her familiar eyes for understanding of why.

"Hi," She giggled, her voice now dripping with peppy optimism, reminding him of Jazz. "I'm Cindress. You know, like cinders in a fire? But you probably could have figured that out when I lit your pretty little city up like a candle." She stuck out a hand, as if waiting for a shake.

After much hesitation in his heart, Danny reached out his hand and clasped it in hers.

"Now," she said, letting go of his hand. "We don't have much time. Guards, would you please escort Mr. Foley and Miss Manson away while-"

"They are staying here." Danny interrupted. "I don't know what you are up to, but they are staying where I can look after them."

"Danneth, I just want to talk. I want to help you."

"Help me? And what is this Danneth business? My name is Danny." He retorted in disgust.

"I just want to help. I already know about everything, depression, the wrist slits, the nightmares, everything."

Embarrassment, shock, anger, and confusion, all mix-melted into one humbling cauldron of emotions drizzled all over Danny's face. He cleared his throat.

"Nightmares?" He asked, as though conspicuous. The other things his friends and family had known about. No one had ever heard of any nightmares. He'd never talked about them, not to anyone. There were no cries or screams in the night; they had been his darkest secret.

Cindress smiled even more and nodded.

"Uh-hu. I keep myself actively involved with watching you Daniel."

"Freak…" Sam mumbled under her breath.

"Takes one to know one, I guess." The teen scowled down at Sam before continuing. "Listen, I just need to talk to you. I'll only take a second. Like I said, I just want to help."

"Then talk to me."

"Alone. Daniel does it mean anything to you?" She snickered in a growing cruelty.

"What you can say to me you can say to my friends." Danny's heart raced as he could see a change in her intensity, coloring it with anger. The floor beneath her started to blacken, she was burning it. Humidity built, crowding the air air around them all, and her face seared.

"Guards!" Cindress screamed, any joy or pep far from her, in it's place heat poured, as well as the smell of ugly smoke. Two of the three ghosts around her floated over and grabbed the wrists of Sam and Tucker. Arms wrenched behind their backs, they were shoved up against what remained of standing wall.

Danny leapt into the air and began to fly over for a rescue when he found his throat tightly grabbed by a scalding gloved hand. He was flung to the ground, and a heavy boot plopped hard unto his chest. A horrid burn began sizzling into the flesh where Cindress had griped him. He gritted his teeth as her shoe atop him, glowed orange with heat, as the coils of a stovetop, melting his suit into his skin and beginning to set the suffering teen's chest aflame.


	5. Chapter 5

The pain in Danny's chest increased by the milliseconds. He couldn't move, he couldn't breathe. But what he felt was what he believed to be his organs burning under her fiery foot.

"Danny!" His friends called as they struggled to break free of the massive ghosts binding them. The young teen lay in silence, bonfire blazing on him, the spandex from his ghost suit literally boiling on his ashen skin. The flames spread across his whole torso, crackling as it did.

Cindress only giggled, removed the boot, and leaned down over what remained of Danny's upper half.

"Make a wish." She laughed in her mischief. As the fire brushed his neck, she gently blew it out like most would a birthday cake.

Danny grimaced in his agony.

Sam called out his name repeatedly, as she too, grimaced his agony. Letting out a cry of effort, she broke the grip of her guard. Tears once again trickled down her cheeks as she knelt beside him.

"Oh…oh my gosh. Oh, Danny," she choked back a sob at his pink and black chest, steaming a mutilated. She leaned close to his ear, the most beautiful words she'd tasted in her mouth making their way to her lips for the longest awaited time. "Danny, I love you. Danny, You've got to hang on, please. I love you Danny, can you hear me? Danny, don't you dare let go. I won't let anything happen, I won't give up, but neither can you. You've got to believe in yourself, I do. I do and will and always have. I love you, Danny, please."

Interrupted by a hot gloved hand on her shoulder, Sam let out a shrill shriek of fear and pain.

"That's quite enough, Miss Manson."

"You call that helping him?" She climbed to her feet. "Why you little-"

"Sam!" Danny managed to croak. Smiles were all over his face, but firmness remained in his now beaming eyes at her. He sorely and impossibly rocked his head, telling her no. "Cindress, I'll talk." He agreed, breath thin as ice.

"Good!" Cindress exclaimed and clapped her hands with her excitement, the gooey peppiness returning. "It's about time! You'll learn soon enough Danneth that you can get anything you want if you know the right way to...well, influence the giver's choice."

Gliding her tongue over her teeth, Cindress nodded to her guards who then forced Sam and Tucker out of the room.

She called to the third enslaved soldier looked to her, and she commanded, "Secure his sister."

The door closed behind him as he left, sending a cooling breeze over the room. Black, clouded air jumped back from the gust.

All grew still and quiet. The world seemed to pause. No screams from outside were heard, no cries from the billowing smoke. Paused. Paused, and alone with a nightmare creeping closer to crisply burnt boy.

"I'm so sorry Danneth," Cindress said sitting down beside him. "I didn't mean to hurt you, but I really needed to talk to you. I know you are gonna like what I have to say. I just know it."

At this point Danny had no idea what to think of her. His inner conscience cheered and embraced the trust towards her. This, combined with the soothing of his inner fires telling him that he knew her, attuned his ear to listen openly. But, his heart shouted of how she'd burned practically the whole city down, brought troops to aid her destruction, harmed his best friends by her orders, and lit him on fire.

"Here, Let me clean up the mess I made and then we'll talk." Sincerity filled her voice and it eased him like the cooing of a dove, or a warm wave washing over the shore.

"First, I gotta get this melted spandex off you before it dries so it won't rip up any more skin." She peeled of her left glove, revealing what seemed to be a class ring on her finger. But before there could be a good look at it a rubber glove was pulled on over it. "Let's see, let's see." The villainess mumbled to herself. A stench of molten tar rose from the gooey thickness, still bubbling slightly on Danny's chest. Cindress reached down and run her finger gently over the quickly drying surface. The ghost boy ground his teeth together. From a pocket in her velvety cape she removed a pill bottle from which she dumped out a single purple capsule.

"Swallow this. It will numb you, and you need that because I'm about to tear up you flesh and smooth on some new skin."

From her crooked smile he could tell this was no joke. He was personally going to get to watch his own body be peeled up and look at new skin spread over his chest. All kinds of pleas and insults he wished he could slur came to his mouth, but wheezy breaths were hard enough to manage.

She held the capsule beneath his nose, commanding, "Open up."

Danny's chapped lips barely parted and the drug was shoved between them, falling onto his tongue. He swallowed hard.

Relaxation fell over his body. The pain and suffering left him. Pressure of suffocation lifted away. With the ache gone, his thoughts and oxygen began to flow properly.

"You may want to close your eyes." Cindress cautioned, her nose wrinkling. "You won't want to watch, I can guarantee that much. Although, if I find anything awesome I tell you to look. Hey, relax, I've done this a billion times before."

"How can I trust you?" Danny asked, his voice now strong, steadied.

"You better trust me, because you're fate is in my hands. At any second I could kill you, but if I'd wanted to, I would have just let you burn to death while your friends watched every moment of the process. Actually, I would cut you stomach open and pour gunpowder inside. Then I would roll your small intestines out like wire and set them on fire. The fire would travel up your intestine until, BOOM! It reaches your stomach and you blow up into a thousand little pieces. I'd laugh manically and then your friends would scream. I call it the human cannon. But I don't want to kill you. How many times do I have to tell you? I want to help you. Now, close your eyes."

Reluctantly, Danny slowly closed his baby blues, which were currently glowing green, and let out a long tired breath. Yet, as Cindress took a knife from a sleeve inside her boot, began to hum "Remember" and traced the dragger along the perimeter of Danny's entire torso, his inner conscience remained at peace.

Cindress bewildered him though. She acted as if she was outlining some arts and crafts project rather than cutting up the chest of a halfa in order to tear his flesh up and plaster on new skin. The knife was then turned to it's side, and she shaved away at the sticky red gunk on Daniel's pinkish burn. After scraping up ashen burn and molten spandex, there was nothing but a red slimy surface left. Grinning, she wiped her brow. Again, Cindress took her knife and traced around his torso. She shaved away at the sticky red gunk on Daniel's pinkish burn. After scraping up ashen burn and molten spandex, she concluded her humming and giggled to herself about what appeared to be nothing. Again and again. Layer after layer. She repeated her steps. Over and over for a good fifteen minutes.

When she thought she finally might be finished, she let out a big sigh and smiled with satisfaction. A only a layer of skin about as thin and delicate as wet tissue paper was left of the distraught boy's chest.

"Okay, if you can handle looking right though this tiny layer of skin left to where you can see all your muscles and organs than, then take a look. But if you can't, don't. If you vomit it will ruin all my work. It's not that difficult to wrap the old noodle around."

Danny kept his eyes fixed on her.

A freakish grin crawled across her face. She reached once again into her boot, but this time pulled out a small jar of what looked like rubber cement.

"Where do you obtain all this scientific knowledge and material?" Danny asked, his face quizzical.

"They're discoveries of my own," She beamed with pride, and then, a shadow of regret fell over her. "See, what I mean is, I've studied with a incredible ghostly scientist, and when I say I discovered them, I mean, I saw them, and then stole them." The peculiar shadow fell under hardly masked panic. Quickly, she livened her face and continued, "This is a concoction that, with my own heat and your ashy flesh, becomes a thick paint-like mixture. I'm going to spread it across this last little layer left of skin on your bare bones. Then, we'll let it dry. It will hurt like a wicked sunburn for a few hours, and then will return to normal, with the exception of looking pretty pink for about two weeks."

She smiled and unscrewed the lid to the rubber cement-like jar. Gently, she picked up a handful of the peeled flesh and dropped it inside. Fist full, after fist full, till every last flake of blacken skin was within the bottle. Her face became an unfathomable form of amusement.

"However, if you like what I have to say, and I know you will, you won't be here two weeks from now." She snorted and stirred the mixture with a small brush attached to the lid. Daniel's heart leaped nearly out of his chest and he stared at her. Simply staring. Maybe, just maybe she was the answer to all his prayers, his way out of existence.


	6. Chapter 6

"See," Cindress giggled. "You're interested! I knew you would be." She stopped stirring her little science project and snapped her fingers. A small blue flame blazed over her thumb and she held the bottle over it. "Now if you don't mind I'm going to ask you some questions, they are quite personal but, I need you to answer them honestly. This is for your safety, so if you lie you will get yourself in some deep trouble. Is that alright?"

Honestly, he had no idea. Here this girl barged into his life, lit his city on fire, lit him on fire, then falls in and out of being a sweetheart and offering him all he wants. The only battle raging now was between Danny's heart and the mind. As his mind told him to trust her, let her take him out of this world, his heart squealed no. It was Sam that had done it. He began to wrestle with the question of which he wanted more, his ticket out of living, or a life with Sam.

"Yeah, go ahead," he answered finally, figuring a conversation wouldn't hurt anything.

"Yay! I'm gonna ask my questions while I work. Try not to freak out." She grinned and blew out the flame on her thumb. "Alright, first things first. Do you know me?"

Danny opened his mouth to answer but stopped in self conscious caution.

"Well, since you asked me to be honest, I will be but my answer is very, uh, well, ridiculous."

"I like ridiculous, go ahead."

"I-I think I know you. I have something deep down that wants to just throw its arms around you and hold you, but I can't place who you are. It's driving me insane."

"I like insanity too." She sighed happily and began to gently spread a think and warm substance over the last thin layer of skin left on the boy's upper half. "Believe it or not, you aren't insane. I understand what you're feeling, and I know why you feel that way."

"Enlighten me, please."

Cindress simply smiled.

"Not yet. Tell me, at this time in your life, do you love Missy Samantha?"

Bewilderment fell over Danny's face as well as a furious blush.

"Why do you ask?" he said trying to control his heart from pounding through his new layer of drying skin.

"I'm asking the questions. I know you do I just wanna hear you say it," She snorted.

Danny frowned whiled she laughed.

"…yes…" he muttered, barely audible.

"Yes what?"

"Yes I love her."

"Yes you love who?

"Yes I love Samantha Manson, I always have more than anyone one, and anything and I can't stop! Every day I love her more and more, She's beautiful and unique, exquisite even, and I want to love her always. Now, will everybody quit hounding me!" the room was quiet of a minute then his face broke out a shade beet red as she fell to pieces laughing.

"Oh wow," she wheezed between giggles. "Well then, um… that was different. But, uhh, I'll move on to spare emotional scaring." She took a deep breath and continued. "What happens in your nightmares?"

"You said you knew that."

"I also knew that you were madly in love with Miss Teenage Goth Queen. I want to hear your outbursts of thought and feeling. They are all built up in you like a volcano waiting to erupt. Erupt boy! You might as well spew your lava over someone that likes it." Grinning down at him, she painted on more skin with graceful, steady strokes.

"They are horrible." Danny started. "When I wake up from them, it's as if I've fallen into this dark wet hole that I can't climb out of. I'm nauseous with splitting headaches and sweaty fevers... I can't sleep because of them."

"Yes, but what happens_ in_ the dreams?"

"They are all different. Some start at home or in the park, while others start in the ghost zone." He looked up to the mysterious ghost teen with fear filled eyes. "Everything in the world slow and pain-filled. There is a clock ticking, first quietly, then louder and louder. I'm with Sam. We're just talking about simple things, nothing special, when this unearthly darkness comes over us, and she vanishes. She's gone forever and it's my fault. I _know_ the dreams will be reality. I just know they will. I can almost hear someone in my head, warning me that I will lose her. And it makes me want her fate…more than I want to save her, I want her fate. This desire, this need, this fire-it consumes me. It's a passion I can't stop or control. I don't know where it came from, or when the dreams will take on reality, but it won't go away, not till I find a way to take Sam's place. But, I don't know why I have to. I don't know why she's going to be taken. I don't know what do think right now though, She told me she loves me, just now...and I want her, I want to tell her, but, I know I'm just causing more suffering because she is going to lose me, and preferably soon." He stared out into the smoke of his town and then turned back for some kind of guidance.

"Hmm…" Cindress's smile became either slightly amused, or very sympathetic, however, it were impossible for Danny to distinguish. "Danneth, you know me because, well," After a deep breath her lips parted and out from them emerged the most impossible truth. "I'm your daughter…"


	7. Chapter 7

The world was not only paused now, it was stopped. Young Daniel couldn't find air or words. Like the weight of reality crushing down on him, his weary heart thundered within his chest.

"My real name is Cindy Mae Fenton, but when I work with you and Momma I'm Cindress. I traveled through Clockwork's castle, back in time, because I felt like it was my job to warn you." She blew softly over him to help the mixture dry. "In the future, there is this ghost villainess, Vanessa, my age. She's an obsessed, crazy scientist who has dedicated her life to rule not only the ghost zone, but the earth as well with her torture devices and mind control experiments. But see, when she was only a human baby, before all the madness took over, You and Momma had adopted her and she was growing into a healthy young child. She and I were the best of friends, might as well have been biological sisters." Cindress's eyes grew distant, vague, and lost in memory.

"But, knowing the truth about her parent's ghost-centered lives, and having been kept far from them because she was only human, Vanessa began to resent her family, and her humanity. So, she devoted her life to sciences of ghost and humans alike. You and Momma were deceived into believing that her hobby were a healthy one, but it couldn't have been further from the truth. One afternoon when experimenting, she concocted a vapor that would control the bodies of both humans and ghosts. It was then that we lost her. Vanessa asked me to join her in her destiny to control all live, telling me that together we would have been unstoppable. But, loving my parents, I told them everything... Naturally, you and Momma tried to harness her, rehabilitate her, strip her of her discoveries and destiny... A very long story short, I fell victim to her mind control vapor and became her slave for three long months. On the last day of the third month the vapor effects began to wear off and I began to have moments where I was in control of myself again. I kept this secret from her and managed to escape that night, taking with me as many other mind controlled drones of hers as I could. Sadly though, I'm not fully out of her control and I still quirks where she'll pull my strings as her puppet. That's why I lit you on fire and that's the troops I rescued destroyed your city in search of you. I feel horrible, but I can't co anything to stop the quirks with out the proper antidote." She let out an aggravated sigh before continuing.

"Stupid tears. They freakin' burn!" Cindress her bloodshot eyes and sniffled. "Vanessa began to hunt me down immediately. Because I had my mind back, I could set you and Momma free from her capture and she would be stopped. But, I didn't know where to run, I had no plan and no means to rescue you and Momma on my own, so I went to Clockwork's castle to try and seek advise. When I got there, I was told by the observers that Clockwork had devised some plot to rip my mother off the earth and out of the ghost zone, to cause her to just vanish from existence. They explained that if they did this all things would work together in the future to see that you would never seek to marry or start a family and that your sole focus would be protecting the earth from the ghost zone... Anyway, I came here to warn you and to tell you that I know how to satisfy both you and Clockwork at the same time without damaging the time stream." A tiny grin of triumph skittered onto her tired face.

"Let me get this straight," Danny managed to choke out of so much shock, "I'm your father?"

"Yes, you are. I know this is a whole lot for me to just barge in a dump on you. I'm sorry, there wasn't really much of an other choice."

"And you're telling me, that in the future there is a crazy scientist lady named Vanessa, that I'd helped to raise, that wants to dictate the ghost zone and the earth with a mind control vapor, and no one can stop her?"

"Only you and mom could. But, when Vanessa gave you the choice of my slaughter or being put under lockdown, you chose lockdown. You were both put under a paralysis drug of hers, and only she can wake you with an antidote. I can't stop her on my own."

"And when you were fleeing from her, you heard the observers say that he would rip my wife, your mother, out of existence to make everything right, so you came to warn me, but in the process you had a quirk of mind control and you attacked everything?"

"Wow, I thought I was going to lose you at 'I'm your daughter,' but this is impressive. So far you're right on target, are you ready for more?"

Danny lay quiet for a moment, soaking in the silence. Of course he wasn't.

"I guess so," he mumbled under his breath, and she cracked another a smile.

"Ok I think these next few words may solve everything. You can take mom's place and get ripped out of existence instead." Cindress threw her hands dramatically in the air proclaiming, "It's what you want isn't it?"

"More than anything..."

"And you'll be saving her from a horrible fate at the same time!"

Danny pondered this for a moment. He did want this more than anything. Here it was, gazing down on him, yet something wasn't sitting right in his mind. Something was out of place.

"Who is your mother?" he asked delicately, like a thin sheet of glass being placed on the nails.

"Who do you think my mother is? Samantha Manson, duh!" She snapped back, shattering his glass. "A monkey with short-term memory loss could've figured that out! No offense… She wasn't exaggerating, you _were_ totally clueless." She laughed heartily.

Daniel's eyes grew large. All forms of expression, beyond a distant smirk and quiet blush, left his face. He knew immediately, to maintain dignity, he needed to exchange his focus.

"And, how does trading places with her satisfy Clockwork?"

"Another stupid question." Cindress rolled her eyes. "He wants one of you gone so it will drive the other one into destroying anything and everything that is a danger to any innocent person. Don't you know your little Missy Samantha would do that in your remembrance and absence?"

"But, Sam doesn't have ghost powers..." Danny thought aloud, beginning to doubt his little girl's intentions, to question her true motives. Although, his conscience was quick to correct those feelings, kick them back in line with trust. The teen ghost boy cocked his head, longing to sit up, stopped fast with the pain reliever wearing off and the fresh skin fizzing a little like a soda on him as it began to dry and set in place. The blacks from the burning were still lightly visible, as well as the pinks on his new skin, like faint swirls of dark mist on a clear pool. "Um, you know how to illuminate me permanently?"

"Yes sir-ree! You won't even feel anything-well, for the most part. It's another creation of Vanessa's. I stole it, as well a few other things, when I escaped-and let me tell you, it is _not_ easy trying to steal things while running for your life!"

"I don't know about this..." Danny hesitated. "I love Sam, everyone knows that but her, and now when she tells me she feels the same and we can finally be together, I'm going to be ripped out of everything. It just seems that maybe, I don't know. I don't know anything anymore…"

"Yes, but you'll lose her and hate yourself forever if you go for her love, saying all will be fine, when in only a matter of days, she'll receive the very fate you crave."

She paused while Danny thought. "You can't have her Danny, I'm sorry. No matter what you choose, she is not to be yours. Wouldn't you rather spare her life and let her become the most respected and beloved guardian in the world and the ghost zone? I truly am sorry though. I mean, I'm having to give up my existence too. I just hoped, since you are my father, and my family's protector, that you would want to do this for her, for my mother..." She stared onto the floor, there seeing her mother's face, hearing her soft hum and feeling the gentle kiss she'd felt only as a baby...

Danny reached out a trembling hand laid it on hers.

An invisible force passed between them, silently, and quickly. It washed over each of the two teens, with great strength it touched deeply in them. They knew what had to be done, and it was the force that silently settled it. Nothing was said, for nothing was needed. The wave, for a moment, brought together father and daughter, from future and past, and it passed as smoothly as it came.

"I have to go, make preparations and see what I can do to fix all the damage I've done. Again, I'm truly sorry this has to happen. I wish so much that it doesn't have to be this way. But it does, and I guess that's just the way things turn out." She sighed heavy. "I'll give you till noon tomorrow to say good-bye to all your friends and family. Spend time with them, tell them you love them, but do not tell them you're leaving, or give them a reason to think they need to try and rescue you."

Daniel nodded solemnly.

"You do realize that there is no turning back now."

He swallowed back emotion as he was pulled back into his muddy slick hole of depression. _Why are you upset?_ His conscience asked sadly. _You are getting all you wanted-and you are doing this for a good reason, to save the girl you love._

"I know," he said coldly. There was no hint of doubt in him about what he was going to do.

Cindress nodded just as solemnly, but with a smirk, and then vanished away in thick black smoke.

Daniel sat up, now alone. All that had just occurred swirled his head into his jumbled stomach. Finally, all that was so wildly still and paused in his world for the past twenty minutes found that a button labeled "PLAY" had been pressed, and nothing was the same as before, just as it never would be.


	8. Chapter 8

Daniel, alone in his nearly destroyed room, looked down at his chest. Completely dry and new was his skin, as if it had never been used for his daughter's kindling. Slowly, he sat up, grimacing at the pain of moving the delicate flesh. Cindress had been right about it's healing pains, but she neglected to mention the feelings of being repeatedly scratched and clawed at while it burned.

"Well," he muttered to himself, "it could be worse. No wait, that's a lie."

"Danny?" Sam called out as she darted up the stairs alongside Tucker and his PDA. "Danny," She sighed, relieved to see him, as she threw her arms around the still suffering halfa. Danny grit his teeth at the pain in his chest, but he knew if he let her go his pain would only meet a deeper one. "What'd she want? That horrible brat didn't hurt you anymore, did she?"

Daniel laughed to himself, not knowing what do say.

She pulled back from him and smiled, a hopeful glitter gleaming in her lavender eyes.

"I'm fine now." He took Sam's hands and gently kissed her cheek. Tucker lost it. Tears flew from his face and his fist pounded the floor as he rolled with uncontrollable laughter. But the two could care less, and they blushed, studying one another.

"Who was she, and what did she want. She healed you? Why? What'd she-"

"Slow down, I'll answer all your questions, just as soon as Tuck gets his butt home."

The laughter stopped instantly and Tucker sat straight up on the floor looking a lot like a kindergartner that was just told to eat vegetables instead of dessert.

"Hey! I want to know too! Besides, I can't go home now, the ghost zone is exploding out there."

"It's calmed way down." Danny raised Sam and himself to their feet as he continued explaining, "She's gone, and she took her troops too. The only war now is the fight to put out fires and people fighting injuries. Go help them."

"No, not until I know what the crazy lady wanted!" he crossed his arms and pouted. "Plus, I can't leave you two here _alone_! I don't want to be called Uncle Tucker any time soon."

"Tucker!" They both screamed in unison and disgust.

Danny stopped and thought a second.

"Oh, wait..." He'd realized the true irony in what his friend just said. He fought to maintain control over laughing, but, unable to resist, lost it almost as bad a Tuck.

"Danny, I don't find this funny. At all. What are you cracking up about?" Sam scowled. Daniel harnessed his hysteria and breathed in deep.

"Nothing, I just realized something. Now, get out of here Tuck."

He shook his head wildly no and huffed at them.

"Don't make me kick you out."

"Come on, I want to know. Why won't you tell me? Just because the two of you aren't clueless anymore doesn't mean I'm obsolete."

Danny opened his mouth to speak but no words came to him. "Alright, alright! You can stay, if you sit in that exact spot, and you don't make any noise what-so-ever. Especially laughing."

"Fine..."

"Well, here Sam you might want to sit down." A hand guided the low of her back to his bed where he sat them both down. The fragile nature of the situation ground at his nerves. "That girl, Cindress, is from the future. When she was a child her adopted sister, Vanessa, grew spiteful of the relations and abilities that Cindress possessed because of her parents. It drove Vanessa to become a scientist and to invent, among many other harmful things, a vapor that could control minds. She then grew into a power seeking crazy villainess, obsessed with experiments and control. Cindress and her parents fought to stop Vanessa, but Cindress fell victim to the mind control and her parents were captured under a paralysis drug. For three months Cindress was a slave to wickedness and horrible errands. On the last day of the third month, yesterday, she needed another dose of the vapor in order to stay under Vanessa's control. However, Vanessa didn't know this, and Cindress was able to escape that night with a fleet troops. With everyone under mind control out looking for her, she had nowhere left to go, so she tried the past to try and stop things before they started. But she has theses quirks where the mind control takes over. The vapor effects will never completely be gone without an antidote. So, when she arrived here, she had a quirk. That's why she told the troops to destroy the city and that's why she set me on fire."

"But, I don't get why she came to you." Sam said still lost.

"That's why I wanted Tucker to leave. Because, well, it's hard to say, and a bit, uh, awkward."

"I don't understand."

Daniel sighed.

"She's our…daughter. Sam, Cindress is our daughter."

"Oh-well-yah-well-that's logical-and normal-yah-our daughter...?" Sam stuttered. "There's nothing crazy about...OUR DAUGHTER!"

Her mascara-caked lashes fluttered, her eyes rolled back, and she fainted there on the bed as Tucker lost the lock on his lips and roared loud guffaws that shook Danny's thinning nerves.


	9. Chapter 9

"Your…daughter?" Tucker asked though laughter and gasps for air.

"Shut it Tuck! Help me wake her."

"I-I can't-stop-the laughter! OH!-so-that's why-you laughed-when I said that thing about being called-oh-I can't breathe! You and Sam-and the kid-that pyromaniac freak-is-daddy's little-girl!"

At this point Daniel stopped listening to Tucker's whooping laughter and pointless amused babbles. He began to focus instead on a better cause. Adjusting her more comfortably from where he'd caught her in his arms, he slowly stood with her. He looked down to his bloodied and sweat soiled sheets and scowled. This would not do at all. So, downstairs he gently stepped and laid her on a puffy living room couch, the cushions swallowing her little body. He gently brushed the hair away from her face and she awoke to his lips brushing her forehead.

"Danny?" Sam asked wearily. "Oh it is you, thank goodness."

"Are you alright?"

"Well I guess so. I would be a lot better if Tucker would shut his pie-hole."

"I think we all would be, but I have a feeling he won't for a while." The two sat in silence for a moment. Soaking in each other's presence, peaceful and relaxed. It was in this moment that they felt a new feeling for one another. Something completely and utterly new, with what could only be described as drive. For all of their relationship it seemed as though they'd been the drivers of separate cars, engines clanking on the way down life's twists and turns. Stuck in neutral, they'd muddled along slowly and steadily together. But the two teens had just been gifted with the use of the gas pedal. Their engines purred as they raced along side of each other, and just for this one silent moment, when all seemed to finally shift into gear, all that stretched before them was far from black, and without detour. There was only seen invincibility and endearing courage on the fresh road they would share. None could they see of a wreck that awaited both of them; one that would change everything in the lives of not only the two teens, but their families and friends, every person they'd ever seen or talked to, and all the people they hadn't never would. The entirety of the universal future sat clasped in the hands of a wildly depressed halfa and a rebellious goth girl that were both too blind to see it.

"And then-oh my stomach-lovebirds-and the-Mr. Clueless-Valerie-and the class ring-they were both clueless!" Tucker stumbled down the stairs, tripping over his words, as well as his feet. After a few final giggles and deep gasps for air, he finally finished. "Oh…I'm sorry. Sam, are you ok?"

She slowly nodded a suddenly irritated yes.

"Where's Jazz? Mom and Dad told her to stay her with me when they went out ghost hunting this morning." Daniel wondered. "Jazz?"

No answer.

"Jazz!" Tucker echoed, still without response.

"Knowing her, she probably went out to help. She knew we were here to take care of you." Sam suggested.

"By the looks of things I don't think like any help is needed." Daniel peered outside his clear window.

Not a single puff of smoke billowed through the air. Not a scream, or choking or coughing could be heard. Not a fire lit the sky, and not a thing were burned to ashen remain. The sky was clear and sunny. The public walked about his or her business like every other day. All was lush, green, and perfect in Amity Park.

"Impossible..." Daniel muttered under his breath and quickly ran upstairs, bursting into his bedroom. Everything sat in its original organized mess. The walls too were once again in tact framing his cleaned room.The boy shook his dizzy head and blinked hard to rid his eyes of confusion. This pleasantness truly filled reality. Lastly, Danny turned his attention downward on his own body, where he was sure that were there a change, he would have noticed. A gasp involuntarily escaped from his mouth.

Phasing back into a human he bolted back down stairs where he lifted up his shirt to reveal a clean, healthy chest to his friends. All that shown on his ivory flesh was the faint red imprint in the shape of a boot between his breasts.

"What on earth?"

Both Sam and Tucker's mouths fell agape, a small smirk tucked between Sam's open lips.

"I don't understand." Danny shook his head, trying to sort out a clouded heart and mind. "Is this some kind of rewind, or fast-forward ability Cindress possesses? I just don't understand."

"I don't either." Tucker found a smile in his ignorance though, and continued, "But, I mean, I don't think I care... Everything's back in order. Those who were injured, aren't any more. What she destroyed, has been rebuilt. Danny, if she really was good like she said she was, and was traveling through time like she said she was, then she was probably just trying to set things right, to make up for all the damage she caused by accident. Look, Sam and I aren't even stained or bruised anymore."

The three ghost-hunting musketeers pondered this thought for a moment until Danny angrily retorted, "What do you mean 'like she said she was,' you aren't possibly implying that she was deceiving us? Tucker, we may not know her yet, but she's still my daughter no matter what time zone she's in, and she was telling me the truth!"

The frustrated teen's temples began to ache again, and his body to burn with fever, and his stomach to churn with nausea.

"Dude, Danny, get a grip," his cautious friend tried to soothe. "She lit you on fire. She and her little band of ghost nazis were really messing people up out there. Do you not remember what Sam and I looked like when we came for you? Why we even came for you? I'm just keeping every possibility open. We've been deceived by many scheming ghosts, and just because this one calls you Daddy, doesn't change anything. You weren't out there. You don't understand how traumatizing she is."

Danny was in his face now, spewing the words, "I don't understand? _I _don't understand. Tucker, you listen to me. I understand completely and fully. Don't you dare hurl your degrading accusations at me. You weren't in here. You don't understand. You don't have a clue. She is an answered prayer to all of us."

"Danny." Sam dizzily took to her feet and pressed a cool hand against his hot and furious chest. "Settle down, Tucker is right to keep all possibilities open. I believe you that she's our daughter, and that she means well, but that doesn't mean we throw caution to the wind and trust her with our lives."

The wildfire pulsing through poor Daniel fled once again from him at the girls sweet, iced touch. He held Tucker's gaze as his eyes left the room and his mind.

"You both don't understand. She traumatizes me..." He whimpered in the smallest whisper, without the knowledge that he had, or even the knowledge of what he meant.

His focus again found itself in the present, and in his home, and faced in a temper rage against his best friend. "Tucker, I'm so sorry. Please forgive me, I, I'm not myself. There's a lot still on my mind. I'm very confused...frightened, even... But, it'll all be alright. I promise you both that, I'll always make sure everything will turn out alright."

Sam chewed her lip with anxious nerves at his somber tone. There was no hope where there should have been in such a statement.

She slid her fingers from the twisted knots she'd formed in his shirt and placed them under his chin, tilting his eyes to meet hers.

"Danny, we're going to spend the evening together. We're going to clear your mind of everything heavy and just be together for a while. Okay?"

"Yes, please. Immediately."

Nothing more perfect could have been suggested. An enormous smile spread between their faces.

"What would you like to do tonight? I'm taking you wherever you want to go. And Tucker you're spending the night afterwards." Knowing tomorrow everything would be set right, he seemed to become excited that the night would be fun, the boy needed it more than anyone. Light filled his eyes, flooded his body with energy.

Both gawked in bewilderment at this sudden enthusiasm in their friend.

"Um," Sam thought. As long as she was with him she was more than happy. "Surprise me. You're great with surprises."

"Sure," He beamed. "Tucker I'll call you to come over when I'm on my way home. Sam I'll come get you in...an hour I guess. I'll see y'all in a little bit, I gotta find Jazz and my parents, and I'll probably shower."

At this point, there would be no way that the two friends would comprehend his extreme change of disposition, but there would also never be a chance that either would question it for one moment. Yet, as the two left they felt as if they already knew of drastic change soon to meet them. Only, they speculated an entirely too optimistic and unrealistic form of drastic.


	10. Chapter 10

"Sam-i-kins!" Mrs. Manson squealed before she barged right in on her daughter. "Sweetie what do you want for dinner tonight? I'm thinking about actually cooking something!"

"I going out tonight." She shouted dismissively under the load roar of music shaking the foundation.

"Since when does my baby girl have plans I don't know about?"

"What are you talking about? You never know what I'm doing." Irritated, she poked her face from the mess that could hardly be called a closet.

"Oh, you silly child. You act like I don't know my own baby girl." The bubbly woman looked for a place to sit in denial that wasn't black or covered in skulls.

"What time did I come back home this afternoon?" Sam quizzed.

"Ha! You think you could get me with a trick question. But you never had to come back because you never left home!" Mrs. Manson flashed her bleached white teeth in what she thought was defeat.

Her daughter simply rolled her eyes and sighed, disappearing back into the depths of her closet. "I don't have time for this."

"Well maybe I haven't been as involved as I should be, but that doesn't mean I can't start now. Now, tell me where you are going tonight."

Sam shrugged and yanked off her boots. "I dunno."

"You don't know? Well that's suspicious, don't you think so?"

"No, I'm being surprised." She stopped stiff in her motions of undressing. Sam mentally crossed her fingers, pleading in her mind for her mother not to ask it.

"Surprised? This sounds like a boy. Ooo! Is it a boy? Tell me about him!"

She asked it.

Her mother perked up even more, childish thrill goop-ing from her in juicy gossip enthusiasm looking like the little sister Sam thanked God she never had.

"Its just Danny, Mom. Chill out."

Mrs. Manson deflated at this.

"What about Tucker?" She asked conspicuously, realizing that there was still secrecy to squeeze from the topic.

"What about him?" This was way more than enough parental involvement for an entire month. She never prods so hard.

"He has feelings too you know! He might feel left out. Why don't you invite him along. You can all go see some movie."

"What is your deal? Why are you bugging me so much? I always have plans, what is so different about these?" At this point Sam had swiped up a change of clothes slammed her enormous closet door behind her.

"I'm your mother young lady, and as your mother I have permission to know what my daughter is up to! You know I don't like this boy. I think he'll get you into trouble! Unless I get the information I want, you will not leave this house Samantha Manson!"

The closet door swung violently open to reveal the half, hastily-dressed and infuriated goth girl.

"Ask your dumb questions." She commanded dryly fighting the screaming that would get her grounded.

"You don't know where he's taking you?"

"Nope."

"Is he picking you up?"

"Yep."

"Are you going to his house at all?"

"Dunno. Is that all your questions?"

"No!" Mrs. Manson chewed her lip with anxious nerves, and she fumbled around in her mind's dictionary for the proper phrasing as to not upset her little girl. "Is this a more-than-a-friend thing?"

Sam opened her mouth to a no, then changed it to a yes, then back to a no. The truth of it was, she didn't know.

"Um," She started, "Mom, I think it might be. Maybe?"

The deeply pleased parent smuggled her secret joy out under a protective warning. "Alright, well if you aren't back by eleven thirty sharp I'm calling the authorities and telling them I want Daniel Fenton on my doorstep in cuffs abduction charges slapped on his guilty face. And locking lips on the porch doesn't count as home! I mean in your room getting ready for bed! Are we clear?"

Sam didn't dare protest beyond a blush at her mother's kissing comment.

"Crystal."

With poise, her mother strode out of the room, letting a smile find her collagen-plumped, strawberry-kissed lips in the relief that those two crazy kids had finally wised up.


	11. Chapter 11

"Hey!" Sam exclaimed ecstatically as she opened the door. "Mom! I'm leaving!"

"Remember what I said about the porch!"

"Yah, okay! I got it! Bye!"

She hurriedly closed the door behind her.

"Hello there, you look..." Danny slid his eyes over her. Regular combat boots, smoky blackish gray jean skirt, about knee length paired with a swampy green tee, a signature black skull in marking the middle. Her hair found a familiar fashion, hanging as it once did at a school dance so very long ago, the way he loved it. Fishnet gloves stretched up to her elbows, allowing her fingers to peek out uncovered, save black nail polish. Her make up appeared a bit softer, more natural, but a bit more of a blush hued her porcelain flesh. But, the favorite for young Daniel happened to be the vintage class ring hung around her neck, and the way it gleamed in setting sunlight in her eyes. "Absolutely breathtaking."

The blush in her cheeks intensified.

"Thank you, you don't look half bad yourself. It's nice to see you cleaned and in normal clothes again... Did you ever find Jazz and your parents? Mine had no memory of the attack. They were all, "We've been home all day sweetie." I could only laugh."

"Yeah, I found them, they said the same things too. Funny, how only we remember what happened. Oh well, I trust Cindress's time mending."

"Yah, I hope she'll be trustworthy to us. So, where are we going?" Enthusiasm drizzled like chocolate over her words.

"You said for it to be a surprise. I certainly intend it to be."

Sam sighed lovingly at his baby blues as her took her hand and brought her around the corner into an empty ally way. Looking around suspiciously, he allowed two rings of white to encompass his waist and then float apart from each other as they transformed him into a ghostly figure. A glowing hand outstretched to his date a blindfold.

"Um, ok." She said hesitating, but after settling her trust in him, then confidently tied on the blindfold.

"Give me your hand?" He requested quietly. Extending fanned fingers she soon found them gripped around his shoulder and his own fingers rubbing soft, and trembling to grasp onto waist, as if cradling fragile glass.

"If my parents see us, they'll think you let the ghost boy kidnap me," She giggled and then couldn't help asking, "You won't let go will you?"

Though she could not see him, Danny shook his head in a concerned no and then with amusement answered her simply.

"When have you ever cared what your parents thought?"

The pinkish volume of the blush in her cheeks increased shades darker as her nose wrinkled with a smile.

As Danny propelled them upward into flight over the shrinking houses and city, he couldn't help himself from drawing his sweetheart further into his arms. All he ever needed was by his side, and it was all he would never have. But, between his temples echoed the phrase _Carpe Deum_, which in Latin means seize the day. It was all he could do, and think, and live out, seizing the ever-ticking moments he would be permitted to share with his darling angel of darkness.

Soon, he drew near to their destination and the halfa gently set her down, remaining in the air and phasing back into a human.

"Can I take off the blindfold now?"

"No, but I'm going to take off your shoes and socks. Then I'll take off your blindfold."

He knelt to her feet and began untying her laces.

"My shoes and socks? Ha! Danny wait! Oh man..." She blindly grasped at the air until finding balance steadied on his shoulders as he peeled back her last sock.

"Now what do you feel?" Daniel asked barely audible, taking her hands as she offered them to ease the pull to his feet.

"Dirt. No wait, sand?"

He reached around her head and removed the blindfold.

"Now what do you see?"

She first saw the face of the boy she loved, then the white sands swallowing her bare toes as she sunk into them. The salty taste of the ocean hung in the air as the waves crashed onto the shores. Pinks, purples and yellows painted their hues across the sky with soft sunset strokes. A small dark cave hunched over fallen and moss covered tree trunks against a tall rocky barricade. Daniel watched his Sam in awe as she drank in the surroundings that he called his secret cove. No one had ever entered there but him, and now her.

"How much of an idiot an I to bring you here?" He asked a bit louder than before.

"If to be an idiot is to be genius, then you are the worlds biggest idiot."

"Uh, is that good then?"

Sam's warm laugh fell between them. "It is brilliance that I'm sure Mr. Lancer would love to see in class. Good, no. Brilliant, definitely."

"You're talking in your goth poetry. Sorry, it's hard for a genius like me to keep up."

"Oh is it now?" Sam's voice found a playfulness like an eager puppy. With each word their faces grew closer and Daniel waited for her bite. "Goth poetry is hard to keep up with, huh? Is that what you're telling me?" A grin formed to match her tone, aggressive. "Have fun keeping up with this!" Unexpectedly, she shoved hard against his shoulders and he tumbled back flat into the powdery white.

"Oh, so that's how it is? Alright, two can play!"

Jumping to his feet, he chased her into the waves. With a single whack he drenched what was not already dripping with foamy water. The splashes and chasing all followed screams and laughter echoed though the cove.

"If you could change one thing in life what would it be?"

Several hours had passed. The sun had slipped away beyond ocean, who's dark waters lapped at the shore.

Daniel frowned at this question. He looked from her soft, curious gaze, into the violently flickering campfire they'd build. Between the yellow and orange he began to understand dark truth. These were their final moments together.

"It sounds cheesy, but I would never let tonight end."

Sam never stopped her smiles at him, she never would. Despite her ignorance to the depth of his wish in the current moment, it would be all she could think of come tomorrow.

One of her delicate hands reached up to the class ring that hung from her neck and pulled it off, breaking the chain in the process. Placing it in Daniel's rough palm, she sighed."This is yours."

"Oh no, I believe you are mistaken Miss."

"Ha ha, very funny," she said sarcastically.

"No, really, it doesn't have my name on it, it can't be mine."

"Name? The only name on here is…" Her voice trailed as the embers of the campfire reflected onto the ring a whole new fiery desire for the one who held it. "…mine…"

"It's yours if you'd like, but, uh, in taking it, you kinda get stuck with me too."

"Stuck with you? Danny, ring or no ring, I want you."

With this he quickly pulled her close to kiss her in only the light of the fire.

Pausing, he twiddled his fingers under her chin in sight hesitation.

He could not let her suffer like that. Like he was suffering. And yet, he could not bare it if this moment of oneness were to slip away from them into his oblivion. He leaned in their noses, pressing them against each other's. Sam trembled. He sucked in her honey tasting breaths as they blew between his watering lips.

His pants began to vibrate. It was his phone ringing. Before he could have attempted to blow it off, it soon began to chime, loudly. Sam's laughter rung along with it as she let the situation tickle her nerves.

"Hello?" Danny asked with a raspy tone. "Yes, I know it's dark out now… I don't think that is your business… He's what? Alright well, how long has he been there?... Ok, ok! Eesh! I know, I know… no… yeah sorta… I dunno let me ask, hang on." He cupped his palm over the receiver. "You wanna grab something to eat at my house? You've gotta be starving."

"Sure." She had time.

"Yeah she does... All right… No… Ok… Ok… Ok…see you soon, bye. I know, I know, I know! All right… Yes… Ok… I'm going to hang up now. Yes, I know… I'm hanging up the phone. I know! Good-bye!" He slammed his phone closed. "Will she ever shut up?"

"Jazz?" She asked thoughtfully.

"Why must she act like I'm five?"

"She's your sister. It's her job." Sam explained, remembering her mother, and then filling her again with thankfulness for being born an only child.

"I'm so sorry she called when she did." As he slid the class ring onto the proper finger, all that he could hear was the quiet, seemingly terrified whispers of _Carpe Deum…Carpe Deum…Carpe Deum…_

"That's ok, it's life. Well, your life anyway." She smirked at him. Gently kissing her forehead, he smirked back. "I like your life."

She took his hair into her fingers returned the kiss to his cheek.

"I like my life too." He helped her to her feet and kicked sand into the campfire to put it out, in his mind though he kicked the plan of his darling daughter out of mind so that he could truly_ Carpe Deum _as his inner conscience so fervently prompted.


	12. Chapter 12

They walked quietly in the dark back to FentonWorks, hand-in-hand, over the moonlit streets of a sleeping Amity Park.

"Tucker has been at my house for the past hour. Jazz thinks she'll go insane if she has to hear one more thing about his PDA."

Sam laughed, her blush almost at full velocity. "It's the ultimate torture, a boy and his PDA."

"Yah, but we have to put up with Tuck every day. I wish she would have waited just a little longer."

"Well, it's not all bad. It means we gotta do this again."

Daniel frowned under a broken smile.

The rest of their walk remained as peacefully silent as the voice of his inner conscience. It was coming all so fast, too fast, like he were stuck with his gas pedal to the floor while Sam simply cruised along. He longed for some one to ask why there had been no brakes installed. However, were anyone to answer him, he would not slow down or go back. He'd meant what he'd said to Cindress. There would be no turning back. So, the brave boy shook off his worry and his sadness for the quickly approaching dawn.

The door to his house swung open revealing an anxious ginger sister.

"Hey lovebirds." She grinned at their clasped hands and then giggled when neither shouted at her in denial. At seeing her little brother's own grin, who she'd thought had been lost to her and reality in depression, Jazz could not help throwing her arms around him. She then wrapped her arms around Sam. If it weren't for her, the hero she called her brother might still be crying out.

"Sorry," She said stepping back and wiping her smeared mascara. "I know I'm probably acting ridiculous. Just glad to not have lost you, you know? Oh man, you guys come on in."

"'Bout time you got here!" Tucker exclaimed, "I bet you forgot me? Don't I matter? Or should I find a new set of clueless friends to bother since you guys got too smart for me?"

"Sorry Tuck, I guess I lost track of time. I'd taken off my watch and my cell phone out of my pocket because-"

"I don't wanna know."

"But we were-"

"No, I don't wanna hear it."

"Ugh!" Sam stomped over to him and pulled his beret over his head.

"So what are we eating?" Tucker asked like a typical boy, after fixing his hat.

Jazz skipped over to the pantry and peered within.

"I know what we're having!" Danny shouted rather randomly. "Tucker, issue emergency mission forty-two!"

The two boys simultaneously battle-cried to the ceiling and then lunged at the both the fridge and pantry, pulling out all the contents and tossing them gusto onto the counter. At this point Sam and Jazz shared a look of fright and wonder.

Jazz leaned over to her little brother's girlfriend and whispered, "Boys, the eight wonder of the world."

"When did they come up with, and memorize, at least forty-two different food scenarios?"

Jazz simply shook her head and answered, "Be glad you can leave after dinner."

Meanwhile, at the dinner table, the entirety of the Fenton's kitchen were being distributed among tortillas, and as the mounds grew higher, so did the appetites of all who watched. Finally, after only a spoiled ham and rabid hotdogs were left in the refrigerator, they seemed to be done with their masterpieces.

"Ok, I know this probably looks horribly disgusting, but you guys have to try this." Danny said flashing his baby eyes.

Sam sighed, "Alright, I'll try it."

Instantly, she cursed the blessing of Danny's enchanting eyes. Nothing else reflected such innocence. They were beyond anyone, or anything natural, and looking into them, all that could be seen would be a perfect pool of blue, like first breaths of a little angel as it fluttered it's own eyes open and stared curiously in the new world in which it found itself. Daniel was completely supernatural, and since birth, too.

She looked down at the mess on the plate served before her. How was she supposed to even try at eating this giant manifestation of every food she'd ever eaten mushed together on a tortilla.

Jazz gasped in horror.

"Sam don't do it," She pleaded, as if she was about to spray whipped cream up her nose. "I really don't feel like sleeping in the E.R. tonight."

"Don't worry," Tucker snickered, "If you start choking to death, Danny will give you mouth to mouth."

Jazz gasped once more, even more horrified at this mental image. Sam's eyes widened, her veins bulging with the desire to punch her techno geek friend right in the PDA.

"What's the big deal?" Daniel asked and in laughter added, "I'd always save my Samantha's life."

At this, Tucker pretended to stick his finger down his throat and imitated vomiting.

"Alright, alright, enough little brother adorable awkwardness. Sam, don't eat the tortilla!" Jasmine interjected, returning the focus to the present.

"Do it, do it, do it!" The boys chanted.

"Okay! I will! Eesh... But, hey for the record, I'd always be honored to save my Daniel's life, even if it means mouth to mouth." She winked a flirtatious eye at him. Then slowly, the fearless girl reached out a fork and, with great caution, put a bite in her mouth.

Danny and Tucker watched in fixed anticipation as she chewed.

Jazz covered her eyes.

"That-is-awesome!" Sam exclaimed swooping her fork down for more.

"Yes!"

"No!" A hand clapped to Jazz's forehead in frustration. She knew what was coming next.

"Come on now, your turn."

"Um, no! That is so gross and I don't like it."

"But you haven't tried-"

"I do not like them here or there. I do not like them anywhere. I do not like them in a boat. I would not, could not, with a goat. I will not eat them in the rain. I do not like them on a train. I do not like them in a box. I will not eat them with a fox. I do not like them in a house. I would not, could not, with a mouse. I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them. Sam, I am!"

Tucker and Sam looked to Danny for answers who was pounding his head on the wall in aggravation.

"Why? Why must you know that entire book by heart?" Her little brother asked between slams.

Understanding what just happened, Sam and Tucker lost it.

"For occasions like these." Jazz continued over the laughter, crossing her arms. "I don't want to try it and you can't make me."

Danny stopped for a moment to think. Then, with a wicked grin, he reached down a fork and picked up a bite for his stubborn sister. "Or can I? Guys, grab her arms."

Thrusting the poor girl's arms behind her back police style, the two friends grinned just as wickedly as she writhed and questioned in fear. Slowly, Danny leaned over with an intangible fork, clutched in a phantom hand, and extended it into his sister's mouth. Returning to tangibility, the food became solid on her tongue. With a final move, he removed the utensil from her face, and smacked a palm over her lips.

"Chew," was ordered, followed by a command to swallow.

As she was released from her captivity, a smile perched on Jasmine's face.

"Well?" Tucker asked.

"It was _awful_! I knew I would hate it but no-o-oo, I had to try it because- Oh man! Who am I kidding? Gimmie!"

Like the children they were. They leaped to the table and engulfed the odd creations of deliciousness before them. All the while, they caused laughter to echo though the house and in the minds of all the peoples who would soon experience tomorrow, and the minds of those that would have to live with the past flickering as the only light in the dark, approaching future.

But for now, all that was on the minds of the four children was the pleasantness and the tangible love they could feel, like a sweet tenderness blanket wrapping them and pulling them all close into a bond that they felt nothing could break, till a boy would love as a man and walk alone away from this present perfection to be stuck down, causing an ending and a beginning. For perfection, which is hardly honest, is always fleeting.


	13. Chapter 13

Seven AM.

Daniel fought to keeps his eyes open. He continued to remind himself that staying up all night would be worth far more than the cost it currently charged. As tired as he was, he wouldn't waste his last hours away in slumber. Fingering the papers in his bulging pocket, he frowned.

And so the day began, with hushed hovering into his sleeping sister's room, placing the first of his notes within the pages of her diary, closing it with the knowledge that she would find it after rescue was no longer an option. He placed his parent's note in an old photo album, Mr. Lancer's note in a stack of English essays waiting to be graded, Valerie's in her files of the ghost boy she hunted to destroy, Vlad's in the frame of a familiar and beloved picture, and so on with Dash, Paulina and many others that might care to know the secret of Danny Phantom, and the information of what happened to their hero, for those that needed it. As Daniel's pocket decreased in size, the hole of regret within him grew, and grew deeper, closer to the core of him.

Lastly, as he'd been procrastinating against it, he flew within his Sam's mansion. He placed his note to her parents first and then invisibly floated into her room. She slept as he'd never imagined her to. Her body lay in a small, tight ball, clutching tightly around a pillow and blanket. Her hair fanned perfectly over her mattress. Her hands resting by her still and lovely face.

Danny's palms began to sweat.

But his jaw tightened behind taut lips, and in his swiftness of supernatural ability, Danny exchanged his own ghostly body for the pillows that his Samantha clasped.

She stirred around him, her hands sliding into his hair, and a small chill falling over her skin against his undead form. A different chill fell over his.

Soon after though, a familiar fever blazed over him, accompanied by it's usual companions of nausea and headache. Remembering how he needed to truly show his love, Daniel wrapped her sleeping arms back around the pillow and sheet, and after hiding her letter, flew from her room to ease all of his aches.

He flew back to his room in silence and gazed over Amity Park, his home, for what he thought would be that last time.

Eleven AM.

Daniel kissed his sister's forehead before waking Tucker and calling up Sam.

"Morning!" The goth girl greeted rather cheerily.

"Hey, you sound happy. Sleep well?" He asked, a secret smile pursed in his lips.

"Very much so, thank you for asking! How about yourself?"

"Well, it was more of a slumber-less party for me, if you know what I mean. But, my night was awesome, totally worth it. Hey, Tuck and I are heading down to the Nasty Burger, you wanna come?"

"Sure, I'll meet y'all there."

"You're kidding, right? We'll come by and get you. See you in a little bit." Danny hung up and smiled at his best friend as he classically played on his PDA. "Come on, Tucker."

Birds were singing. Clouds were floating. Cars were cruising. Children were playing. Together, Danny and Tucker walked down the streets to pick up the third member of their trio, carefree for the last time.

"Wait here." Danny said going ghost when all was clear and then floating up to his sweetheart's window. His fingers tapped, and it was soon opened to reveal a lavender grin.

"Excuse me Miss, but I can't seem keep away. I know I'm undead and all, but would you care to join me for lunch?"

Her smile grew with his sarcasm. "You're a ghost and I'm a human, it would never work out, I'm afraid. Not to mention, I've dedicated my affections elsewhere as of last night. But, still, I hate to deny you ghostboy. There's something about you..." Her smirk played along. "It's not your hair. I'm goth and I don't do white." She ran her fingers though the snowcap. "It's not that you are a hero. I believe everyone is a hero within." Her fingers traced the DP on his chest. "Perhaps, the smile. It is brave and strong, while sweet and compassionate. It's not boastful or arrogant, but proud. What, may I ask, are you so proud of Phantom?"

"The beautiful girl gliding her hand across my mouth."

"Are you guys coming or what?" Tucker screamed.

The halfa rolled his eyes and found his hands on Sam's waist to guide her down.

"Wait," She stopped him. "Kiss me?"

Danny looked at her with shock-filled, grieving eyes. "With Tucker watching us?"

"It's not like he hasn't seen it before."

"Fake-outs don't count!" Tucker shouted from below as he eavesdropped.

Daniel sighed with frustration, "Come on, we'd better go."

"Danny," She whined "Please…" Sam curled out her lips out with the big anime eyes. Daniel laughed and sweetly kissed her cheek.

"Later. I promise. I respect you too much to be so public with my affections."

She gave him her hand in beaming honor and he took her waist in a tighter grip. Gently, they floated down and Danny Phantom returned to human form.

Eleven-Thirty AM.

"Sam what made you an ultra-recyclo-vegetarian in the first place?" Tucker questioned, looking for some attention. As much as he wanted Danny and Sam to be together, he was now officially attention hungry.

"It's her individuality shining though her diet." Danny answered and his face stiffened. He wanted to make the most of every last second with them. "Tuck, what is your favorite memory?"

Bewilderment fell over the faces stuck with randomness.

"Well…I guess it was that night when we used your ghost powers to get that video of your sister dancing a lip-syncing in her hair brush to Hit Me Baby One More Time and then putting it on the Internet."

"Oh yeah, ha! I almost forgot about that… Sam what about you?"

"Um… I don't know. I want to say the time I was in that pageant and was almost forced into marrying that ghost so, I got to act like a total gothic freak in order to get rid of him, but now I'm gonna have to say last night."

They gawked at each other.

"I couldn't agree more."

"What makes you ask?"

"I guess, well we have so many memories, and, I dunno, I like hearing the good ones."

"Danny, what's on your mind?"

He opened his mouth but nothing came. He wouldn't tell, he wouldn't tell… He had to tell.

"Sam," He sighed, also letting out a misty blue ghost sense. Timing is perfect. A hand grabbed his ankle and pulled him intangibly into the storage room below The Nasty Burger.

"Daniel, can you please tell me," Vlad Plasmius asked mockingly, "What is the meaning of this?" He thrust a paper into the teen's confused face. It was his paper, his note from the frame.

"It's a note I left you and everyone else I know. They're all different but-"

"No, no! I know what it is; I want to know what the meaning of it is!"

"To say goodbye..." Danny began to grow irritated himself. Vlad always has some way to make him feel dumb or immature.

Vlad pushed the note closer to the boy's face.

"_I have discovered what it is truly like for you and how awful it is. All the puns and jokes must have been horrible and I want you to know that I understand the depth of you Vlad and that your fate of solitude is not lived out alone…_" Vlad recited while Danny stared in awe that he had memorized it already. "And what exactly is the meaning of _that_?"


	14. Chapter 14

"Vlad," Danny started, "Look there's something I have to do and there is nothing anyone can do about it. I don't even want any more, to do it but I have to."

A dark pain-filled smirk flashed onto Plasmius's face.

"For the girl?"

The teen simply closed his eyes and sighed, waiting till he could utter a yes.

"And what, Daniel, are you having to do that requires you to have to say goodbye to mean old Vlad Masters and apologize for your childish teasing?"

Danny's head raced. He'd made a solemn vow that the only one that would know what happened and why was the girl who caused it all, Samantha.

"I don't have time for this! I only have one-hour and fifteen minutes left to exist and you're wasting it away!" He stood angrily to his feet. "I have no choice but to bear a fate wretched as yours, so I would appreciate it if you could respect my last spit of time!"

"You do not have to share my fate, Daniel! Nothing is ever absolute. I want everyday to go back and restart after my college accident. Yes, bad things happen but that doesn't mean it's goodbye to those things being taken from you. Now, I don't fully understand what is happening, but you always have a choice. You do not have to accept my fate if you don't want it. Use my mistakes as a lesson Daniel, and learn from them. These are not requests!" All mockery left the small closet around them. Vlad's face hid none of his genuine concern and Danny felt judged as his equal looking into his desperate intentions.

"Vlad, I'm not sure what's come over you... But the problem is, you don't fully understand that it's too late for any of this. It's over. I made my decision. You always told me I was becoming just like you, and I suppose, in many ways you were right even though we couldn't have been more different. Mr. Masters, I'm going to lose her to another life without me, but I lose her not by accidental chance, but by choice, to save her. I am taking her fate. We're the same in most experiences we've had, but we will never see eye to eye because your fate that took you from my mom hardened you, filled you with wicked desire, you let it turn you into a monster. But, I rose to the challenge of my accident, and my loss of love will come out of my love and conviction of justice. What fate my ghost powers have caused is not Sam's burned to bear. It's mine. And I fully intend to bear it for her, no matter what the cost."

"My boy... Daniel, look at me and believe me now when I tell you, it is never too late to turn around what situation has been fated."

The room was quiet.

"Then it's not too late for you."

Daniel pushed passed him, closing the closet door behind himself as Vlad, again, found himself alone. "What was that about?" Tuck asked as soon as his best friend had sat back down.

"Just Plasmius, nothing big. So what'd I miss?"

Though he'd asked, the distraught young man could not listen to anything beyond his warring hopes and inner conscience. Maybe Vlad had been right, maybe there was some transparent hope left between eleven and twelve. The final hour. However, his inner conscience clearly believed there wasn't.

All Danny could see was the hour glass left of his life. Each tiny grain of sand an artificial glimmer of a fulfilled wish, a broken smile, his childish longings and innocence, each tiny grain of sand pouring like water down through the unreachable half of the hour glass. He prayed against the will of his inner conscience for one, single hope to cling to, a sifter to catch the rapidly falling pieces, anything to save even a grain powdery white. Yet it drained through, as did the minutes, as did the color from his face, and as did the patience of the teen ghost girl holding his fate in her hands.

"Danny, are you alright?" Sam asked nervously at his dark veins shining through paled skin.

"I don't feel too well, but everything will be fine. Where'd Tucker go?"

"He left ten minutes ago Danny. Where's your mind been?"

"He went home? I, Sam, I didn't get to say goodbye to him." Tears were fought to stay in Danny's eyes.

"What's the big deal? You'll see him tomorrow."

He fought harder till strength ran dry, but it was enough to keep the salty waterfall from bursting loose.

Softly, and worriedly, Sam asked, "You want me to walk you home?"

Daniel slowly nodded, feeling a deep sense of loss for his best friend.

"Can we go through the park?" He asked, still longing for his kiss.

"Sure, come on silly boy," She took his hand and they walked toward FentonWorks.

Five minutes.

"Sam, have you ever heard the latin phrase, 'Carpe deum'?"

"Yes...Doesn't it mean to seize the day?"

Air began to escape the boy in mild panic, "It does. It was all I could think yesterday with you..."

"Danny, what's on your mind. I'm not going to lose you back to that black hole again. I know yesterday was a breakthrough day for you, but that doesn't mean that everything is better now. Help me help you fight through this, talk to me, I'm always going to be right here for you."

He could no longer stand it. Their footsteps stopped. His kissed perched on cheek and traveled down to land gently by her lips.

Panicked pleasure filled her eyes.

"Danny," Sam whispered in all understanding of his seriousness. "Danny, you look at me right now, and you hear what I'm telling you. I don't care how young we are, and I don't care how mature the choices you have to make are. I don't care. Daniel Fenton, I love you. I love you and I have loved you. No matter what happens, I wanted you for far too long to let you go now that I have you. I won't ever give up on you, on us, not ever, Danny."

He was breathless.

Time was up.

The earth beneath them split and wrenched her from his arms. Daniel's face became expressionless as smoke rose up from the frayed land. Molten rock oozed up and began to form itself into the shape of a wicked-looking feminine frame. The magma dripping body of Cindress started to receive ghostly color and she soon stood there before them, raised out of the core.

"Good afternoon." She said kindly, nodding to the both of them. Between her particularly clever grin and her wildly amused eyes hung an anxious, impatient air. "Father, I believe it's time to go."

She extended her arm for him to come forth.

"Danny, what is she talking about?" Fear and confusion penetrated into an already sobbing Sam.

He couldn't bear to look at her, so with nothing said, and with out a look his love's way he walked into the arms of his little girl and they vanished in a wild explosion of soot and smoke. The bitter smell of ashes stung at the young lady's tear filled eyes as Daniel left her, just as he had Plasmius.

"So," Cindress said gleaming her dagger-edged pearly whites. "What do you think?"

Daniel hardly could focus on the room he found himself in. Still trying to shake his overwhelming heartache off, he glanced around the peroxide smelling lab. Beakers boiled everywhere with all kinds of steams and vapors clouding the air. It looked more as though Cindress were the crazy scientist, Vanessa, and not the daughter that had escaped her clutches.

"It's…interesting." He offered, trying not to offend what a great job his child had managed out of thievery under a hunter's search.

"That right there," She gestured to the other end of the room where a tall glass case stood. It looked identical to the experimental chamber Vlad used when attempting to get a mid-morph sample of Danny. "Is where whole thing goes down. I will secure you inside, let the vapor will fill the tank, and you will painlessly begin to shut down. It'll be a lot like getting laughing gas. After your human half is dead, it'll start to take you apart molecule by molecule, as your precious parents would say, while you are trying to become full ghost. But, obviously, you'll never complete the process and will be finit-o."

"And that's it?" He asked boldly. He wasn't afraid to die, nor to loose existence.

"That's it! Let's get you prepared. Come here."

Danny walked to her in courage, and from behind his ear she ripped away what felt like a band aid.

"What was that?" Danny asked quickly, his heart beginning to see all the danger flags.

"It's called an ectoplasmic sick aid, and it remains intangible on whomever I've stuck it to. I invented it myself. It allows me to make you feel sick as a dog, and whisper right into your thoughts in order to pull your strings like a little puppet. It was my first prototype of mind control. Problem is, the victim was still ultimately in control, so I had to invent this..." The villainess slammed her boot hard to the floor. As a purple smoke filled the room she sealed away her breath. Into his lungs the vapors crept. Down his throat, into his blood, overtaking his mind, and pumping into his heart.

In his last few seconds of self control, Danny gently closed his eyes to try and ease the rapid spinning of the world around him.

When all became clear, he watched his baby girl cackle maniacally as she sputtered the words,"You idiot!"

And all that followed became empty.

His throat ran dry, his blood coursed with the venom, his mind no longer his own to control, her heart pumped of black hate, and the hourglass dropped it's last grain away to loss without even a transparent hope as the Danny's drastically wrong turn began as he handed the wheel over to a wickedness he barely even grasped.


	15. Chapter 15

The sky was colored of puke. Dark green swirled with black and specks of random pinks, blues, reds, and purples, like chunks of food, mixed throughout the syrupy vomit sky. It was almost as if the clouds had eaten some of the billowing chemicals and smoke and, having disliked the taste so much, thrown them up for all of Amity Park to see.

Danneth Phantom glazed his eyes over the destroyed and terrorized city beneath him. Bright lime colored ectoplasmic fires blazed on every inch of building and splotch of grass. All lay broken and obliterated. His eyes focused hard on his sister, who sobbed violently into her bloodied hands, and also his parents, who were desperately hunting for the ghost that caused such a chaos, while he, the one responsible, floated, simply watching them with eyes twisted in confused curiosity.

But, his job was finished and he should return with the pride of destructive triumph soaked up like a sponge. She would be proud of him, very proud. Smiling wickedly, he began to fly back to the ghost-zone, to his new home. The post-mortal swirls and vicious undead eyes gleamed undisturbed as he kept back to her.

"You were right, it was simple," his voice like a deep, bellowing bass broke through the quiet of the work in the laboratory.

"See you _can_ do it! I knew you could!" Vanessa beamed at her loyal slave. He was becoming stronger and more obedient with every order and brainwashed thought.

"But, some parts were strange. Several humans would not stop telling me that I didn't know what I was doing, that I'd taken things too far. Their bodies shook water from their eyes with loud noises. Who were they?" Danneth questioned with the pure innocent wonder of a child.

Vanessa sighed, followed by a frown. "Do you remember when you were still confused about things?"

"Before you cured me? I don't know if I do. I mean, it was only a few days ago, but it's all so blurry."

"They are confused people Danneth, like you were. They don't understand the things we do but, they think they do."

Danneth chewed on this for a moment.

"There was a boy and an older girl. They pleaded the hardest for me to stop. They called me by the name Danny. Who were they? I have requested this answer once before, may I not obtain this knowledge from you?"

Vanessa clicked her tongue against her teeth in frustration and confusion of her own.

"They were your friends Danneth," She reluctantly answered. "The boy is called Tucker Foley, he used to be your best friend, and the other girl, with the red hair, was your sister, Jasmine. They wanted to help you, but they need the cure, just as you did. They don't understand what we have to do."

"We called her Jazz..." Danny realized aloud. But Vanessa quickly commanded an, "Or maybe we didn't," out of his lips.

Something about the halfa aspect of Danny somehow stunted and slowed the mind control vapor on him, and the wicked scientist found herself in constant need of reinforcing thought whispers to keep him relying on, believing in, and obeying her.

"Lucky for me I had you to cure my infected brain." Danneth smiled at her in admiration. "Soon everyone else will be given the cure, and together we will rule a new generation, without the human illness." She smiled deviously back at him.

"You're wonderful." He was so proud to be part of such a noble cause that would change the world for the better.

"You'd better get some rest. We have some major work to do tomorrow and you'll need all the strength you can get."

The sandman quickly ran to Danneth and he suddenly was exhausted after his hard day's work. He trudged slowly into his own quarters and plopped down his bed. Sleep came faster even than his exhaustion and, within seconds, he was lost in another world, free from Vanessa's control.

_"You idiot!"_

_Danny's knees buckled and he fell to the floor, feeling drained of all strength. Cindress's body began to transform into another person altogether. Her hair stretched out into long, combed locks and a pen tucked behind her ear. On her slender legs formed neat black slacks, her shirt becoming a soft lime sweater with a zip-up turtleneck and her cape became a long white lab coat._

_"You're not my daughter, you're the crazy scientist she claimed to be running from. You're Vanessa!" Danny choked out._

_"Oh, Danneth you're such a genius! You figured me out!" She exclaimed in sarcastic triumph, "Your daughter is the only thing standing in my way of my domination in the future! So I decided, why not stop all this before it started. Under my clutches and will you'll never bear a daughter. I'm going to cause you all the grief and suffering that you and your wife-y and your little demon daughter caused me! Starting with your sweet little city, and ending with your in-existence!"_

_He fell unconscious against all his distraught panic as she cackled wildly at her defeat, having cast him, at last, under her mind control._

Sweat beaded on Danneth's clammy skin as he shot up in bed. Gulping in air, he threw off the covers and flew into the laboratory to find his captor. There he poured out to her that he was still having the nightmares.

"Vanessa, I know you told me that I am simply reacting to the chemicals healing the disfunction of my brain and the illusions of reality I used to perceive as truth, but… I don't know something keeps telling me it was real."

"Do you remember when you woke up from passing out, after I'd given you your dose of the cure?" She struggled to look relaxed at his memories as they flooded back. Her vapors had worked on everyone in the future without brainwashing.

Danneth smiled as he remembered her warm smile when he had blinked his eyes open and found himself in a bed. She had claimed she was a ghost called Vanessa and he had agreed to testing an experimental vapor to cure an illness that infected the brain of all humans. This illness caused negative, unproductive emotions and hormones that clouded the human thought process causing conflict and agony of all kinds. The cure would simply rid all lives of these negative influences and perceptions. Danneth had been her most willing volunteer, and since he was both ghost and human, could be prove if the vapor had been successful on both ghost and human brains. And it had been, with the side effects of slight memory loss in the altering of a new perception of reality.

It was true he felt stronger, more able-bodied and his mind clearer. But something felt wrong, missing almost.

"How could I forget? I wish so badly I could remember all that you've told me, all that we've discovered and worked on together."

Vanessa smiled at the lies she forced through his head and mouth. "Danneth, your nightmares will leave soon, I promise. Just give the cure a bit more time and if there is still a problem then I'll take some tests and spot the problem and whip up something to fix it. In the mean time you can take these." She dug in her lab coat pocket and pulled out two small blue pills, placing them gently in his sweaty palm. "They'll have you in such a deep sleep that you won't remember any dreaming that you do. I'm worried, you really need your rest tonight, we have a very busy schedule tomorrow."

"Thank you, goodnight."

He made his way back to his chambers and swallowed the tiny pills, gracious to have a partner as brilliant and understanding. All the while the villainess wiped her brow with relief of the moment.


	16. Chapter 16

A rat scurried by the sopping wet teen who would have screamed, if she were an ounce less goth. She bit her purple lip and sent nervous air hissing through flared nostrils. Nothing would stop Samantha from fulfilling promises, even if it meant using the sewers to reach the ghost portal in FentonWorks unnoticed. She knew nothing of the mind control or Vanessa or the fate that awaited her, but she did know she would save her Daniel before it was too late.

"I'm coming, hang on angel. I'm coming. I can fix it. It will be alright." Sam chanted in confidence to herself. Then, as if to wrap a warm comforter around her panicked mind, the determined young lady began to recite to her thoughts her Daniel's carefully written goodbye note.

_Dearest Samantha,_

_When you've known someone as dear as yourself to me for eleven years, you would pray to never be parted. And I have. I pray now that you never let any memory of our eleven years be parted from your heart and mind because of time. To be cliche, by the time will read this I will be gone and there will be no saving me. I've left everyone else their own special notes, telling them that I love them, and that this was something I just had to do. But it's really not at all that simple. I've not taken my life, Sam, I've given it. I've left not because I wanted to, but because I had to save you my sweet. I love you so much, so I spared you the information that Cindress, our future daughter, had been informed of a plan by Clockwork and the Observers to take you out of having ever existed in order to mend chaos in the future. Our brave little girl offered me the your place and I took it without doubt or second thought. Please understand, that regardless of any choice, one of us would have been taken from our lives, from each other. Please understand, that I would fight through all of the world and ghost zone, that I'd face anything and everything to ensure your safety and to be with you, however, we're under the circumstantial fate that we can never be. I choose your life to go on, to live, to continue in hope that it will thrive and despite fact that all we had would have been timeless, you will still experience seven times eleven years of happiness with another, that you'll plant that fiery seed that our daughter grew from into a child that will prosper as a precious human. Just make sure he who lives out your multiplied happiness and waters your seed is worthy of such a blessed responsibility. Dear, darling Samantha, I regret to say you will not see me ever again. So let me tell you now, I love you than anything and anyone and no matter what happens, that will always be the case. You gave my life light and flare that, without you, I wouldn't have even needed to exist. I love you more than I could possibly contain, or imagine, and I hope infinitely, for you, the best._

_Yours Always,_

_Daniel Fenton_

Sam lit a small ectoplasm bomb and threw it hard, plugging her ears. With a mighty explosion sewage sprayed and rumble fell from the now gaping hole above her, letting light flood the dark tunnels. She smiled with satisfaction and walked over to peer up into the familiar ghost laboratory. Hoisting herself up and out, she fell silent at the sight before her. FentonWorks lay in shambles. Everything had been destroyed and crushed out of confusion from her ghostboy. Broken glass crunched beneath her heavy boots as she made her way to the portal. She knew one should never travel though the ghost-zone without a ship, or some form of protection, but taking a few of the still functioning defense weapons, Samantha stepped into the oblivion, determined to save her hero before it was too late.


	17. Chapter 17

"Come on, we're gonna be late!" Vanessa screamed. The door opened to a slight crack and out stepped a mortified Daniel with baby blue eyes, raven black hair, and pale human skin.

"Why does my human half know that you are full of wicked lies?" He questioned darkly, fear escaping him.

Her mouth opened, but she could think of nothing to say.

"Why does my human half know that you made me destroy my town out of vengeful anger instead of noble cause? Why does my human half know that the "cure" that you gave me was your mind control that overtook my ghost half."

He struck hard across her face, pure shock radiating in the red handprint left behind. But in the same instant, it was almost as if realization had slapped her too, and it finally clicked that her mind control could only handle one blood type at a time. It had clung to his ghost half, letting the human half have control and rebellious thought. She currently had no reign.

"Danneth, you don't know what you're doing, or saying. Let me take some tests and we'll see the problem." She began to reach into her coat.

"No!" He threw a fist into Vanessa's stomach sending her flying back into a wall of boiling test tubes. "Enough of this!"

Glass erupted around the livid villainess and green flame spouted from the chemical mix around her. She quickly lunged back at him, disregarding the shards in her shoulders and back. Pinning him to the floor, Vanessa yanked a dagger from her lab coat and began to glide it along Danny's fragile human throat, knowing if she killed his human half he would be hers. His teeth ground together and he kicked her off, standing slowly stood, as did she. The two paused for a moment taking heavy breaths and inspecting their wounds.

The cut had not been deep enough to kill him, just a small slice across his bleeding neck. Vanessa quickly began to pull the glass shoved down within her flesh. A piece about as big as a tea saucer out wriggled it's way out into her now ectoplasm covered hands, and she flung it at his face like a child would a frisbee. Reflexes acted quickly. Daniel turned down and away to let it fling by without gouging his eyes out as it went. He turned back to see a knife-heeled boot swing hard into his face. The blade cut straight through his cheek, shattering his teeth and plummeting out the other cheek. Falling to his knees, he grasped a hand over his mouth, as if to silence the louder than life pain surged while blood poured out and trickled down the back of his throat. He gagged and choked, spitting out mouthful, after mouthful of the deep maroon before Vanessa kicked again, this time the knife plunging into and cracking open his jaw bone.

His mouth hung crooked as the right side unhitched from the rest of his skull, hanging by nothing but slowly ripping skin and the left hinge bending from the weight.

For the last time the wicked girl lifted her foot and slammed the heel into his shoulder sending the helpless boy on his back. Without another thought, she stabbed the dagger deep into Daniel's heart and watched the life slowly and sufferingly drain from his human body.

For a moment Vanessa hung in silent anticipation and shock, hysterical tears beading up in her wild eyes.

"I'm sorry Master, forgive me, for I was blind," a booming voice cut through the pin-drop silence as it's owner stepped from the darkness. His snow-white hair and glowing green eyes were unmistakable as he glowed full ghost and fully under Vanessa's treacherous control.

"Don't worry my Danneth, you are forgiven." She said in great relief and triumph. "I'm going to take to take this body down to Amity Park, you stay here. Kill anyone that enters. I don't care what they say, I'm expecting no one today. I shouldn't be long but I need to take care of some unfinished business while I'm there."

Lifting the lifeless boy to her cut and bleeding shoulders she vanished away in green smoke leaving Danneth in solitude.

He began then to clean the mess of destruction about the lab. His face frozen focused and cruel as he picked up, eyes intense and glinting of some unnamed terror.

"Danny," Sam called, causing him to jump at the sound of another voice. Her face was gentle and afraid, like that of an abused puppy. Danneth swung around, ectoplasmic energy glowing in both hands, ready and waiting to be fired.

"Who's there? Show yourself!"

From the front library stepped the goth trembling at the ghost before her.

"Who are you?" He demanded.

"Danny it's me, it's Sam." Her voice was thin like ice, quivering at the weight crushing down in her.

"Do not call me that! I am Danneth, and you should not be here. I'm under orders to exterminate you. I will now need to." The glow intensified as he aimed at her racing heart.

"Danny, what are you doing?" Exhausted tears burned down her traumatized face.

"Daniel Fenton is dead. You seek for someone inexistent now. I must exterminate you. So please, shut up."

"Dead? No, it can't be..." Color drained from her weary face. Head shaking violently in denial the room began to spin around her and the merciless ghost giving promising death to her.

"I told you to shut up!" the orb flew from his fingers and slammed hard into her chest. Sam lay on the floor in tears as everything fell apart. For a moment, she almost prayed that death take her. Danny was gone, lost. But each broken shard, like a jigsaw puzzle piece, slowly began to form together.

"Mind control... Danny, Cindress wasn't really Cindress, was she? She lied get you in her clutches, she-she killed your human half. She put you under her mind control! She'd never been anything but deceit. She had given the nightmares. She had been the conscience. She had you slipped into depression so you would want to leave the world, and go with her, to be too blinded to question her or fight when she told you I'd be lost to you. It was all her. It was always her! Danny, the antidote!"

Every last piece clicked into place as her mind sped up with her heart rate to concoct a plan of some sort.


	18. Chapter 18

"Wait!" She cried, "Danny I know you're in there, and I know you can only respond as she wills you to, but you can listen to me. Fire and shoot as you may, as she commands. Just miss. Aim poorly if you can. I have to find the antidote, I will."

"What are you talking about? I've never seen you before in my life!" He was forced to scream, but she was right, he heard her, and he knew her, and loved her. He told his body to reach out a loving hand but instead it glowed with another orb to fire at her.

"Danny, please!"

"Be quiet! I'm telling you for the last-put that down this instant!" He shot at her again, but this time she was able to dodge and a crater was left in the wall where she'd stood. Opening her palm to the bottle she'd snatched up, Sam read the words, "HALLUCINATIONS SYRUM." Gently she set it down, overwhelmed by all the bottles and tubes around her to try and check.

He fired repeatedly at her, each time blasting the walls behind her as she'd leap away just in time.

She screamed as one of the orbs met her shoulder, but as she hunched to the side under the sharp pain, her eyes met one of the holes Danneth had blasted for her. Hollow black air flowed deep inside the hole. She screamed into it, this time in experimental curiosity. Her screech echoed and rang. There was something behind that wall. Another room or passageway, the perfect place to store the antidote.

"Oh! Danny! Yes, you are helping!" In courage, Sam stretched her arms and legs open as a target in front of the wall. A monstrous ball of ectoplasmic energy flew at her but instead of knocking her head open, it knocked open the remains of wall to reveal a long dark hallway. A small hope flickered inside the distraught girl, as did the lights running down the passageway, illuminating down to the very chamber that Daniel would have been destroyed in and a small bottle labeled MIND CONTROL ANTIDOTE. Of course, from afar, Sam could not see this, but she knew it her heart as she tore down the hall full aware, a panicked Danneth was right on her toes. The closer she got, the more she could make out the wondrous words on the little bottle, and the more her hope grew. At arms length she swiped it from its pedestal.

A pang of paralyzing pain swept though her already injured shoulder. She grimaced at the blood sliding down her spine. The blade was yanked from her socket and she doubled over. Turning to see his harsh face she almost let out a scream of fear. Her Danny's monstrous ghostly eyes blazed of blood drip red and his hair as pure flame. Veins darkened and looked like spider webs under pale ghostly skin. His ghost form was completing itself. Scars formed on his cheeks and his teeth began to break as they had been. On his chest an enormous stab wound started in display of how he was murdered.

The knife clanked to the floor as he realized what she held.

Though his heart truly leaped with excitement his body slowly backed up. Unable to move her wounded arm, Sam lifted the bottle to her teeth and bit the lid off. A blue-green mist swirled from the top and came over Danneth. His body was told to hold its breath, but with some already had been sucked into his nostrils and drove him mad, craving the full dose. He gulped in the sweet air and his body trembled. Falling to the floor, he cried out, writhing as he felt strength diminish from him and suffering fell over his aching body. Although the scars remained, his veins returned to normal color, his hair extinguished back to normal white and his eyes blinked green once more. His entire body shuttered and twitched as the last of her mind controlling demon exercised his muscles and bones. But alas, the present battle ended and he was Danneth no more.

Sam knelt down beside him and sighed in great, nervous relief. Laughing slightly at her own pain, she reached out and buried a hand in that darling snowy hair.

"I tried so hard to keep things from turning out this way. I wanted nothing more than your safety, and look what I've done, to you to everyone... I didn't want to fight you. Sam, I was only ever trying to fight for my love of you."

"Don't I know it." Sam smiled at her Daniel and what a wonderful sight it was to see him return it. "It's all I was fighting for too."

"Thanks for coming for me," He said weakly and struggled to stand. Faltering slightly, he balanced out and realized that the blood trickling down her back had been his fault. "Oh my goodness, Sam, I'm so sorry."

She laughed warmly, "It's alright, you couldn't help it."

"Here, hang on one second," Vanishing in ghostly mist for a moment, he was quick to return with a small first-aid kit in hand. Reaching in, he pulled out gauze so soak up the blood. He cleansed her with alcohol and wrapped the wound tightly in bandage, all the while clearing up the fog between them.

"So, Vanessa truly killed you?" Sam asked still not wanting to believe the horrid, gruesome truth. Daniel let out a painful sigh though his teeth in remembrance of his jaw hanging like a door with a broken hinge.

"Yes, she did."

Her eyes gently closed letting heavy tears drop to the floor. It was an ache she couldn't bear alone, and fortunately she didn't have to.

"Let it all out," he soothed calmly and wrapped his arms around her as she bawled. Daniel soon focused in secret upon the experimental chamber before them.

At the end of one battle starts another and he knew now what he was to do.

He let Sam have her tears for the moment, and he let himself have her for a moment. "What are you doing?" the broken girl asked frantically as she watched her ghostly love lift the glass and turn the ghastly machine on.

"Vanessa hid this from me where she hid the antidote, why Sam?" he asked in full knowledge of the answer, "It's how I can stop her."

"Is that the thing that rips your out of existence?"

Slowly Daniel nodded as he checked the pressure in the pulse regulators. "She showed me how to use it, telling me that soon she would need me to when our plans started taking action, and then it just disappeared. Since I knew how to operate it she couldn't take a chance that I would use it without her knowing. That I would stop her with it."

"So what are you going to do, put her in it?"

"No," he said coldly "Sam, I'm going in it, and you're going to hit this blue button when I tell you to."

Sam's mouth fell agape, almost as if she was about to fall back in black unconsciousness. But she stood sturdy and silent as she waited for some ease that he was playing some sick joke and that it would soon be over. Danny climbed inside and adjusted the inside screen paneling.

"Danny! You can't possibly be serious! We went through this! That freak Vanessa depressed you with her chemicals and evil thoughts and you don't have to do this! You don't want this! All we have to do is shove her in here. Get out of that wretched thing, right now!"

"No! Sam, I do have to do this. We can't just go down there and snatch her up! I've seen what she can do, you have too, and there is no beating her through force. But behind the scenes, we can. We're losing time, I need you to trust me."

"And how is sacrificing yourself make her vanish?"

"Because we were the reason she ever grew up!"

"What?" Poor Samantha was beyond tired, beyond afraid, beyond confusion and most of all, beyond determined that she would not lose her Danny, not again and not like this.

"Our little girl found Vanessa, we adopted her as a baby. She had no family or friends or anyone to protect her. If it wasn't for us she would have never lived. Don't you see? She was never going to kill either of us, she needed us to adopt her, she needed to keep us alive to keep herself alive."

"Can't we just remember that and not save her in the future?"

"And what of Amity Park now? All of her armies and fleets down on earth now? We have to get rid off her now, there is no other way. I know this will hurt, but you asked me once to not let you, or those that loved me crumble. I mean not to. My Samantha, I need to grow into who my fate has made me, who I need, to be to protect and defend those who cannot for themselves. This is my responsibility, and I'm ready to carry it, fully."

"I'm not pushing that button." She said though tears, staring at him serious disbelief. Inconsistently, her heart cried for consistency. It all had to be some dream, some insane crazy ridiculous nightmare that had trapped her. But she wasn't captured in a nightmare but a nightmare captured her reality, as did Danny's, and there was nothing to do but press the blinking blue light before her and watch all she loved go up in smoke.

"Sam, please for me. Because I love you. Let me be all I can for you. Let me save you from the danger I've created."

The tortured soul of the girl wavered like her crumbling world.

"Love is sacrifice Danny, and I love you." She started towards the flashing button, flashing like her fear and her hope, her life. Her heart thundered in the eye of this storm as she reached a blood stained hand over all fate. "But, love is a two way street, you've saved me every day that you've looked my way, this last time, let me be the one."

Her hand slammed hard upon the button and the other ripped Daniel out of the chamber by his shirt as quickly hopped in his place, her place. The glass sealed before the desperate boy could reach it.

The gas released. There was no going back now.

His glowing hands slammed against it, harder and harder leaving handprints of green dripping down the glass. Though he could not hear her velvet voice, beautiful lavender lips read, "I love you my hero, more than I could possibly contain or imagine."

In pure anger, he blasted the controls opening the glass and letting her limp body fall into his arms.

"Danny," she called absently and hoarsely with eyes and expression blank. "Set things right with Amity Park, please. Vanessa will be gone, but they think you meant to hurt them the other day. Set things right." Blood drained from the side of her mouth as the poisonous toxins infected every cell in her weakening body. Hot tears from Danny's pale face dripped onto hers.

"I can't Sam. I can't do anything without you. I don't want to. This is all my fault. I've failed you and all of Amity Park..."

"No, no. Remember? The only difference between failing and falling is whether you choose to get back up. What do we do when we fall?"

He shook his head "Its too deep, Sam. Not this time, it's over, I-I can't."

"What do we do?"

"We stand..."

"Stand tall for my Daniel, I know you can…"

He kissed her lips as cold death hardened them.

With that, he spun out of all control and wrecked, his life totaled.


	19. Chapter 19

Danny cradled Sam's fragile pale white face in his blood dripping hands, her dead weight captured within his arms as he rocked slowly, crying violently into her lifelessness.

Her body, cold and waxy, began to take on a faint glow.

"I will stand for you, and I will do whatever it takes to make you proud."

His lips parted and traced along her forehead, down her cheeks and to the edge of her mouth. His kissing were gentle and deeply moving. After a moment of hovering his opened mouth over hers in torn loss, he carried her out the corridor and laid her between his sheets. There was no capability in him to bear watching her fade into oblivion. It would start slowly, crawling up her limbs, separating every molecule, every atom, till her entire body looked as nothing but bad quality picture, where he would see all her pixels, and the intoxicants would destroy every last piece of Samantha Manson. It would be a sight Danny would never watch in all his life, so, with a final kiss upon her forehead, he smiled at her and stood to leave.

With a startling jolt, her delicate porcelain hand found itself on his shuddering chest, her fingers blurring and their molecules spread out like newborn spiders fleeing in panic from their mother's back. Like a slow motion video, her hand then dropped back to her side, leaving a trail of arm pieces floating in the air.

Without a grasp on what all had occurred, Danny whispered of his love once more and walked quietly from the room.

An urged tugged at his heart strings, like a child pulling at his mothers dress to capture attention. Something was screaming into him to go back. But, he pushed forward, denying his denial. All of this had brought upon by himself, and for the first time he felt true depression, not just a chemical alteration, and it felt worse.

He turned his path and began to make his way to Clockwork's, in his ambition holding her delicate heart of glass and with a handprint on his. It was only a matter of time before he'd rewrite it, wrenching her hand back and leaping in her place, his place. Silently, he slipped within the tall ticking, castle. He could clean up his mess, fix all his mistakes. In that moment it all suddenly seemed too easy. As if peace were laid before him like the last piece to a two thousand-piece puzzle of impossible odds.

With eager, anxious desire he sought through the time portal images for the second where he could set everything right, where he could save his Samantha, when a time image jumped at his attention and tackled his plans, sprawling his jigsaw to the floor. What should have been the future if Vanessa had succeed was being shown as present hour Amity Park.

Danny reached out a trembling hand and slid it around on the face of the time period clock. He wished deeply that he could have been wrong, but there proof snickered in the face of his last hope. There was no way to save his Samantha and also defeat the wickedness of Vanessa, there never had been one.

With regret, reaching his fingers though the time-portal, he sent ripples though out the jelly-like surface, and then, without a moment more mourning, he plunged through the clock's image. Now three-dimensional, the sight before him was more horrendous than the painting of it he'd climbed through to bring him home. There were no buildings, homes, stores, or structures of any kind. Nor were there trees, grass, flowers, or vegetation of any kind. All of everything in a normal world was gone. In its place was concrete.

As far as the eye could see the dull gray flowed, long and smooth, over the world he used to know. Every twenty feet or so, a spigot poked up from the armored grounds puffing out chemical waste. The skies looked now as though some had cut the stomach that earlier vomited in the air and had cut the it open, the semi-digested food spreading all over the organs and tissues revealed by the opening slice. Skull and bone were the source of brick for large, towering pillars, which cast down tall death shadows and held above them each a small green flame flickering in the ever whistling wind.

But worst wasn't the pollution ripping the sky's stomach open, nor thick concrete covering what once were homes and grass, making the whole city, and beyond, an endless flat plain of boring, decorated only by skeleton art with the billowing flares, but worst fell to the town's inhabitance. At the heart of this bleak beast before Daniel were the peoples walking about in short, deliberate steps, murmuring to themselves, echoing their neighbor. They had all been lost to mind control. They dripped with zomie-like persona, searching aimlessly for their brains.

Randomly, and powerfully, much to the startling of the ghost boy observing them from above, a full chant began from the mouths of the enslaved citizens.

"Sit coming, sit coming, quod nunc is ero hic, ut signum fortuna of usque universitas is mos nunc exsisto hic!"

The latin chanting began the pattern of a canon.

"Sit coming, sit coming, quod nunc is ero hic, ut signum forta of usque universitas is mos nunc exsisto hic!"

Over and over till Danny held his head in paralyzed fear.

Shouts toned to whispers which steadily crept and crescendoed into forte, "Is mos pello pepulli pulsum him, is mos iugulo him, paralized is nuncero. Totus suus imperium quod vox racio per is denique offendo,"

They ran about, flailing their arms and preforming some form of ritual.

"Spes!"

"Fortuna!"

"Totus of panton, suus reign, suus reign mos nunquam terminus!"

The wild chanting came to an abrupt halt and was eased back, as a tsunami would wash back to the sea, into with gentle whispers.

"Pro usquequaque nunquam is ero confuto tame tantum ut is adveho quod est smitten pro sit coming."

All settled. Each citizen now stood in blocks of six-by-two, on their toes with anticipation. Danny stared at them, wondering what the terror befell his actions, when a single techno geek from the army of drones turned to look at him floating above. Tucker's eyes became a strange mixture of utter enragement forced atop overwhelming joy.

He then whispered into the silence, "Sit supervenio."

Harsh whispers waved back through out the fleet of puppet people into a tidal wave until all at once, silence reigned again. But, with one swift movement they swung around in unison and glared death upon him screaming out, "Vanessa is est vicis!"

The skeletal pillars began to lower into the cement, chemical waste swirling like an erie swamp mist at their ankles as they scurried away from the holes where the pillars had been.

Young, desolate Star remained only within the empty square that had formed. "Danneth," She said with sharp, cutting edge to her voice. "Come down to us. We've been awaiting you. She will be here in a moment. You must be patient. Do not leave where you now stand."

Star trotted robotically out of the invisible perimeter, and from where skull pillars once loomed, tall gleaming blades rose, forming a cage.

Danny steadied his footing and let the bars close, along with the lime green of a ghost shield bubble around him. It was unknown what was to happen, and why it was happening, but something somewhere in time had turned out drastically wrong, and there was no way that he had let love's sacrifice be made for nothing. His fist clenched and sweat beaded on his angry, hot face.

Every inhabitant of Amity Park then flung themselves hard upon the ground to bow at the feet of the tyranny that sat in the throne rising from the ground. Crafted from bones was the seat upon which looked down on them from. But, again, the worst was not in the frightfully redesigned world, but the transformation of it's innocent peoples.

The morose carcass of the sloppily murdered Daniel Fenton lay draped over the top of her enormous throne. His eyes gouged and hanging by a thread from their sockets. His appendages gnawed and chewed by vengeful stabs as they barely hung together, almost as if tearing fabric binding bits of raw meat to let them dangle like a body on a noose. His innards exploited, having been popped like balloons full of bile-ish paint, letting the colors and sour smells blend to form a sickening taste that bit the lungs and stung the nose. His jaw completely ripped off, missing somewhere, leaving and opened tunnel to peer down his throat torn open by rabid human hands. His head violently shaven, skin peeled back, skull broken, allowing brain pieces and fleshy bits of his head with blood spout out like a volcano. Daniel's ghostly form stiffened at the sight. It was not out of any terror that sent chills down his undead spine, it was livid disgust that, along with his jaw, the left ring finger had been ripped away from his human body. Vanessa stood from her throne gracefully, her slim figure dressed in perfect white, with a lab coat just as pure flowing behind her clicking dagger heels, and as she took dainty steps toward him, the chemically deceived town roared with thunderous applause. A wicked grin curled nicely on her thin, cherry-kissed lips, while she blushed in the warmth of arrogant pride. Her silvery eyes glistened under mascara caked lashes as she strode toward him.

"Hello Danneth, or should I call you Danny now?" She asked in prim amusement and snapped her fingers to command a steel cylinder to also rise from the ground. "Why did you let Missy Samantha you the antidote?"

He stood in silence. "Answer me first, Vanessa."

"Shoot." Her grin curled higher and from her face the answer could be read before the questions shot.

"How is it possible that you're still here? What on earth have you done? What do you want?"

Snarls were heard from outside the cage.

Vanessa simply shook her head and clicked her tongue in the hysteria of her own entertainment. "I want to tell you a secret, Danny." Slowly, she walked to the steel cylinder and ran her fingers over the surface. "Come here, and you will know everything."

After a few deep and uncertain breaths, the glowing figure marched his way over to face her.

"Do you see what this is?" She opened her left palm to reveal a tiny gel-filled pill. "It's my greatest invention yet. I want you to test it out for me Danny."

The little oval glowed yellow and she giggled at his face as it twisted shock into ignorance. She threw a fist in his chest, making all her puppets laugh at his fallen body crumpled on the ground. Humiliated, he lunged in a charge back at her. The villainess couldn't have been more pleased with this choice of action. Her intangible hand struck through his stomach, opening within, and leaving her experiment as she slipped her hand away. The gel coated capsule exploded, medicine flowing out as Danny caved to buckling knees.

Vanessa raised her arms and the crowd fell into hushed awe.

"Thank you for volunteering to testing my pill. I designed it to completely paralyze the consumer's entire body. Shortly, you won't be able to move anything at all, or say anything, or look anywhere. You'll only hear, think, and breathe. Nothing more, nothing less. You know, it's funny. This is the second time I've popped one of these little pills in you. I think here in the past it will be much more effective than in the future where you'd already fathered a little fire-snot brat that liked to ruin my plans. Hm, now aren't I brilliant?"

Her audience roared.

"If my calculations are correct, and I know they are, you should be losing control of you body. Tell me, can you feel the life being drained from you?"

Only heavy breaths were heard from him.

However, what was heard in is heart had said everything. "_What do we do when we fall?"_

Sluggishly, using only the power from endorphins, he stood on solid knees.

"Not quite!"

With his foot to her gut she let out a hysterical cackle.

"Oh, Danny, even when you've failed you _still_ don't give up, do you?"

This time, he cackled.

"The only difference between falling and failing is whether I choose to get back up, and let me tell you a secret-I won't fail her!"


	20. Chapter 20

"How are you doing this?" Vanessa gasped clutching tightly to her newly broken ribs, her face bleeding ectoplasmic energy and teeth chipped.

"You paralyzed my body, but not my ambitions! You can't stop me until I have avenged her!" He stuck her again in relentless rhythm, like the thudding of a life-luster filled heart.

"Danny you are such an egotistical maniac! You stupid imbecile, I'm a ghost! Only using my own devices can you rid yourself of me."

His blows grew in strength, in speed. He did not want to remove her from existence; he wanted to take her apart molecule, by molecule, into nothingness, and since his hands were the only tools at his exposure...

"But, listen-listen!" A hint of begging smeared out in her pleading tone. "You haven't heard my secret yet…I'm most positive you'll want to hear it."

Without a single wasted moment of hesitation, he lifted her beaten body over his head. With a loud snapping and clanging fuss Vanessa found herself pegged like a dodge ball into the metal bars of the cage in which she entrapped herself.

Danny took slow struggle-filled steps toward her, each second his energy depleting. She lay mangled and twisted as if pinned by gravity in the most unbearable position and she writhed in pain.

"You never did learn anything about chess, did you?" Thick ectoplasm oozed from her as a smirk curled up again on her lips, like a cat snuggling in a familiar cushion. "You were right not to in a lot of aspects. He who would have taught you wanted also for you to be his son, which you are not. I knew him briefly...for a time... in that small window that we were permitted to be together, he taught me the most valuable thing I've ever learned about chess…the queen's sacrifice."

"I don't understand…"

"It's chess, Daniel. Of course you don't understand. But then, you never really did." Her cat-like grin purred and she stood before him. "You really must learn the game, Danny. you would be quite the chessman."

Her eyes gleamed and into them, he attempted to read her.

"There are so many secrets for you to learn, so much for you to explore and live out, the adventures to journey, mysteries to crack, but unfortunately, you lose the game now. Shame really, but on the upside someone will be playing in your stead…"

His knees buckled once again, and he fell to the ground, the awaiting truth, letting the capsule do it's dirty work.

"I don't understand..."

"Do you know why I'm still here Danny?" Her lips pursed as voice left his lungs, toxins finally settling out. "Oh, Danny... I have many more secrets than one... Time travel is a funny thing, isn't it? What one choice may cause, the lives it may create... And the ones it may end. Danny, the queen was sacrificed so you thought you won but, my first secret to reveal to you is that the queen is still alive."

Truth and drug paralyzed him to the cold concrete.

"Did you really think I would be so stupid as to put the thing you could stop me next to the thing that let you have your mind back? Your little chick-a was sprayed with a darkness prototype. Missy Samantha is probably in her last stages of transformation into one wicked looking, dragon-like, Pandora's box, goth girl's dream. I made the prototype just for her. It's called The Black Amethyst. I don't know if you've caught on or not, but I'm kind of a genius. I left you when I knew she'd arrive, I left to finish what you started down here, to douse everyone's pea-brain with my mind controlling drugs, to finally be victorious over something! I left knowing you'd come for me, that I'd be able to relinquish my very tight grasp on my self control and destroy you. It's all I've wanted, this whole time, more than anything, it's all I've ever wanted Danny! I just had to wait to get all the other pieces in the right place. And I have now... Yah, your Missy Samantha is very much alive in her human-dragon-darkness hybrid. She'll be up and kicking very soon, and let me tell you, she's gonna be one mad she-devil. Oh Danny, this is why you lose the game. Well actually," She withdrew from her lab coat, what appeared to be harpoon gun, it's blade filled with a bubbling liquid. "_This_ is why you lose the game!"

Her drones fell into wild cheering, and after several graceful bows to and from their master, quieted out.

Vanessa, with battered body, bubbling harpoon gun, and anxious crowd, glimmered with intense triumph. Like some almighty master she never let the smirk of victory leave her face. Only one trigger tug away from an existence of revenge, a throne of power in this time stream, and her chance to alas smother the word "Checkmate" into the sorry faces of her opposing pawns and knights.

Through sealed eyelids Danny felt the sharp of the harpoon press onto his temple.

Nothing but the creature of Samantha crawled through his mind. He'd held her dead carrion, felt her molecules separate and scatter. Yet, she was safe and he had her quietly awaiting his return in Vanessa's home in the ghost zone as a transformed being called The Black Amethyst, and now he would truly lose her, but this time in true defeat. All the pain for nothing. Not even memories awaited the boy. He would be gone and gone forever, leaving her to join his fate, and also never to be with him. Like everything laughing at him in his mind, Vanessa snickered as she withdrew the point from his head.

"Danny..." Her voice quivered, "Danny, I want to tell you my secrets... I want you to leave existence with them, okay?"

In his ear the suffering Phantom felt the hiss of his predator's breath as it shuddered through and then escaped her.

"I want to tell you a funny story, Danny. Aha, you may not believe me, but it's okay, because sometimes, I don't believe me. We share a mother. But, we don't share a father at all."

More of her nervous, pained breath quivered from her. A spring of tears began to well in her distant eyes. Vanessa let the harpoon gun fall to her feet, immersing herself in how past and future had brought her into such a present.

"We don't even share a time line, much less a reality... I'm the daughter of Vlad Masters, bore by your mother, in the fate that would have occurred had our trio of parents experienced their paranormal accident in college a little differently, had our mother chosen Vlad, instead of idiot Jack... I've been locked away from existence for all of my halfa life. Yes, I severely twisted the truth to my favor when I'd told you about the future, but I did not lie about my adoption, or Cindress, or my envy. I was given another chance at life, set free from my prison in Clockwork's tower of the fates to never befall, I was given another chance as your adopted child. You and Sam adopted me without question or doubt. It was an honor and a blessing from Clockwork, to be asked to raise a lost child from time that deserved a chance at life. Cindress was about five at the time, she was learning how to control her powers and appear as a normal human child, and I just fit right in with the family. But, I didn't. Not at all... _Cindress_ was your child. She was clearly the flesh, blood and ectoplasm of you and Sam, and I clearly was not. My face didn't fit. My skills didn't fit. I didn't fit. Not in that time. I didn't fit...not anywhere. Yet, something in you fit with something in me. We shared something _beautiful_. It was the blood of our mother, and even though I didn't know it, I knew it, and I needed to know it, and feel it, and be it. I needed to exist where I was conceived. I needed to be you... I needed to be our mother's daughter, and my father's princess, but you were told to be father, and your wife was unworthy of us both. It's her fault. It's all Sam's fault. She was a bridge between ghost and human interaction. She brought peace through her wedded vows to you, and through your darling child together. That's what Clockwork was trying to achieve through you and your accident and your future marriage and child. That child was supposed to be _me_ so many years before! My _real _mother and father were supposed to mend the aggression gap between the paranormal and living realms-not you and Sam! But I wouldn't have been as darling as your Cindress. The Observers were convinced I was wicked from the beginning, that I would take any trust that my Vlad's wedded vows had formed and obliterate human-ghost bonds for an eternity with my hunger for control. So, they swayed our mother's heart for your idiot father and created a perfect little future with you, letting ignorant you and far more wicked Sam bring peace, instead of my parents-instead of me!"

Daniel, laying in distraught anguish, blessed and cursed his paralyzed state, wondering what there was to do, how there was anything blessing to come of such twisted curse of time and fate. Vanessa's madness further seized her, and she straddled her legs to stand over her prey. Sitting upon his chest she removed one of the dagger-heeled white shoes from her wriggling toes at his side. Flexing sweaty fingers over the leather, the villainess sharply stabbed the blade into Danny's chest, hooking him onto her pump, allowing her to pull his face up to look into his closed and lost eyes.

"Ha, but not anymore, Danny... I learned the truth on my own. I dug and I plotted and I worked and now it's _finally my time_. I'm going to put you out of your existence, just as you put me out of mine, and I'm going to let your precious little Samantha live out the rest of her eternity in complete darkness as The Black Amethyst, as a stone, hardened by hatred on my victor's ring, finally looking like the the monster she is, that nasty, vile, volatile, rebellious female that somehow created a child more suitable than one my mother and father created... She'll finally be the lonely, misunderstood, monster, instead of my father... I'm going to complete the peace between the ghost zone and this earth with my experiments and creations, just as I have with this little city right here. Don't you see, I had to to do this? I had to test and experiment, like my real dad. I had to never let go of pushing the hope in his mind that he and my mom belonged together. I had to turn him against you for my sake, so he would know somewhere that he was supposed to be a father, that he was supposed to live in the happiness and glory that you would receive in the future by stealing his fate. I had to creep into the past to save my future, the present of my parents. I had to mess up your mind, fill it with lies and drugs. I have to be rid of you, I have to tarnish Sam's life into destruction, I have to have my fate as peace between ghost and human life-it's my fate! ...I've taken care of Missy Samantha, and I've created a balanced utopia here where these humans love and respect a ghost as their leader. Now, all that's left is you... Aha, but not for any longer my adopted, idiot Daddy dearest, it's _my_ fate now."

Vanessa then howled wildly into the vomit sky hanging over her, unlike anything human. Thick ectoplasm dripped down her back and her spectators cried out till earth rumbled.

From behind them a voice whispered in indescribable longing. "My child..."

Vanessa turned, climbing off her mount on Daniel, to meet a face familiar only to her daydreams.

"Daddy..." She whispered in raspy wonder. Her twisted arm reached behind to grasp the harpoon shaft jutting from shoulder blade. "Daddy, why? Why would you do this to me? I'd almost avenged our fates... You still haven't injected the poison... Daddy, come help your little girl. Press the withdraw tab on the gun so the hooks will release and... Daddy?"

Vlad Plasmius stood in tormented defeat. He'd meant to hit her.

Daniel, unable to see or move, shuddered within his mind. Vlad had heard everything. Everything fell between his hands.

"My child... My dearest Vanessa," His feet wondered towards her, his heart almost as confused between action and reality as the villainess crumpled at his mercy. "It's almost funny, my dear. I've fought and spent my entire for all that is before me now. A child bore to me from the woman I loved, respect and glory from my peers, a place of leadership to form a legacy..."

Vlad's eyes searched into the daughter's that he'd never been permitted to have, seizing the vision of every other untouchable desire he'd once lived for. His arms collapsed in around her, crushing them both into a tight embrace.

"Daddy, I did this all for us. I did it to right all the wrongs in the fate we were robbed of. Daddy, press the withdraw tab, please, you're wasting time."

Vlad shook his head and held her tighter into his chest, fixing his eyes hard on Daniel fallen between them, whispering into her ear, "Little Nessa, I wish I could have raised you, I wish I could have had the fate that I've so chased. However, it's not only until right now, when I can see what that would look like, how deceived I'd been on what justice it would do, only now would I ever be truly fit to raise you, because only now, I've finally learned that fate is not a matter of choice, all that is, is what we choose to do with it. I'm so sorry."

Vanessa, knowing what was coming, began to struggle violently against her father. She squealed and begged, her hands flailing for the harpoon gun to release herself.

"Please, leave your existence knowing that it was never you who would have been inadequate as the peace ambassador between human and ghost relations, but it was I who was inadequate to raise such a child, and for that my precious little angel, I'm so sorry. But, I must do what's best by you, having been granted this second chance, this redemption. Goodbye Vanessa, I would have loved you as much as I could have."

Vlad Plasmius grit his teeth as he pressed the injection tab on the harpoon gun and the medicine oozed into her ghostly form.

Vanessa fell to Daniel's side in condemning ache. Slowly, her hands became distorted and slurred away into nothingness. Her eyes lost all understanding as her breaths became choppy, drunken and final. A hole shown through her stomach, spreading with brilliant light, swallowing her entire body into oblivion till the villainess was gone and only an empty harpoon shell remain in her stead.

Vlad walked quietly to Daniel, who was mentally strewn about in a frozen ghostly carcass, as all who were once the mind control of Vanessa erupted from their imprisonment and into confused mass chaos at her loss. Kneeling down beside him, the man chuckled, "Funny thing about fate, isn't it my boy... But, the Observers were right, you made a better me than I have and would have..."

The teen ghost longed to stand, to clasp his arms around the halfa he'd so misunderstood.

All went black. No one moved, not even in breath. The warped sound of wings flapping filled the silence with echoing winds.

"I'm coming for you." A spine-chilling distorted hiss thundered though the darkness.

The wings stopped their steady, booming flaps and in the pitch black, pin-drop silence everyone awaited cruelty to swoop down in bloodlust.

Plasmius let a grin form alongside sympathies and understanding.

An awful screech of the metal bars peeling back rang out, as she stepped, overflowing with untamed anger, inside the cage and over to where Daniel lay. Her night vision glided over his stiff body and then to Vlad.

"Help me help him!" She commanded, her icy fingers hovering over her Phantom's vacant. "Please, Vlad! I'll do anything. You're smarter than me at these things."

"I'm not sure there's very much I can do, but I promise you, I will do anything and everything, too." Vlad answered, sincerity filling his eyes as he knelt to Samantha's side while she wrapped her arms around Daniel's mutilated figure, letting tears fall onto his limp body. She quickly removed and discarded the knifed-heel from his ectoplasm covered chest and clutched him closer into hers.

Samantha's life was still that of human, but she was nothing of a natural being. His daughter's machine had given birth to quite the creature of darkness. Her paled skin glowed of near-death lifelessness, purple veins as jigsaw puzzle tangles pulsing under her sweet smelling, leathery flesh. Where fingernails had once been pointed the spike of claws, and where teeth had found a square shape in her mouth, fangs lined blood red gums behind her taut lavender lips. Deep in her intense wolf-en eyes glinted of coal and gleamed of black ice. Her ink hair hung at regular length, but spider half pig tails sprouting from the black water fall. The straps of a tank top were tattered and torn, hanging at her shoulders, while the silky satin of a corset like top wrapped tightly against her, and a shredded skirt was dancing at the knees. Sketched along her dainty arms were tattooed lines and patterning. A pair of signature boots raised to meet the skirt, but were complemented by an typically uncharacteristic stiletto. Dense sulfur clouds danced around her every movement Most frighteningly lovely though, was the pair of enormous black coated, purple lined, dragon wings that stretched from her back, tucking around her soft, haunting, feminine frame and the trail of black smoke they billowed out when she spread them to soar. She was frighteningly beautiful and a horror filing creature of darkness, just as Vanessa had envisioned her to be.

"I'm so sorry," her harsh whisper and cool touch tickled at the ghost, just as it once had before. "This is all my fault, I should have saved you."

He wanted to scream. His was his fault, his guilt.

Sam stood, securing his body in place.

"Grab my ankle," She requested coldly, and once Vlad's gloved fingers were tight around her boot, Sam shot into the air, spread her wings and soared high into the air to save her darling boy.

As The Black Amethyst tore through puke colored clouds and the sky, with heavenly light, poured through, all the citizens fled about, screaming in wonder of what terror had they again been rescued from.

The dark creature flew gracefully through the underground passage ways, through the Fenton's portal, and into the ghost-zone. Upon finding and entering Vlad's own ghost portal she slipped inside and lay Daniel's body on a metal table for examination and healing.

For the hours that followed, she never left his side. Vlad dressed and cleaned what wounds he could. The two hardly spoke, both of them spending most of their thought's occupation in silent mourning, reverence, and unsurpassed understanding.

"Samantha, dearest, I'm sorry, but I have no antidote to this paralysis. Part of the solution to making Vanessa inexistent involved the destruction of her future experiments. I'll see what I can do to time travel a bit, but I hardly think the Observers will find it acceptable to tamper any more with this time line...Again, I'm so sorry Samantha, but it seems he'll never wake up... He can hear you though. He can think and feel touch; he's still alive. I'm sure he misses living in response to you. Please, know I've done all I can do. Please, also know that-he should be returned home, if only for a visit. The ghost zone is his home now, and I'll see what I can do to get him a roof to rest under here, but, his family, his parents, deserve to know. They should see him, get a chance to try their impressive skills at him."

"Thank you Mr. Masters, I can't thank you enough. I know you can't wake him but he's safe, we're all safe and that debt is owed that to you," She answered, her voice still a terrifying rumble. Vlad managed to smile at the girl. "You're right though, he should visit home. I should probably also check on Amity Park, see how things are returning to normal. May I have some directions through the ghost zone to get back through to the Fenton's portal, please?"

"Nonsense, I have a private helicopter, I'll escort you both home, should I be permitted of course. I'd like a chance to be there to state my own piece, come clean, ask for an apology..."

"I'd be honored."

"Thank you, Samantha. We can discuss visiting your own parents on the way over."

"Oh, yah, my parents... Alright, I suppose I'll call over to the Fenton's see if anyone is there to answer. Um, I'll call my parents too..."

Vlad left her to ready their transportation. A thick premonition of fear caught in her throat as she looked once again to her lost love.

"Oh, what a trip this is going to be... I know you will be with me, but, I wish so badly that you were _with _me." She murmured into his neck, and then The Black Amethyst kissed his immovable lips.


	21. Chapter 21

"Hey there." The dragon-like girl stood before Daniel's still body as it lay there, tucked between his sheets on a large iron rod bed, it's sweet silks soft on his skin and lush maroon canopy draped over his ghostly face. Quietly, she crawled onto the mattress and curled up beside him. Her warmth became as a comforter of her own to the two of them, and for a holy moment they hung together, soaking each other in. An invisible force passed between them, silently, and quickly. It washed over each of the two teens, with great strength it touched deeper than they could have imagined in them, like it was right, like they fit there.

And they did fit there.

"I'm sorry I took so long to be of help to you." She apologized, snuggling onto his chest. "We were all so ignorant to the things going on in the past that I didn't realize that what made my present, was all that had happened in the past. I had been fighting Vanessa as best I could in my present, but, after she'd vanished entirely without trace did I remember what I was do do, what you and mom and told me stories about, and prepared me to do someday to save us all by saving you from this terrible drug. Honestly, I'd mistaken her vanishing for hiding, rather than her actual end."

She paused for a moment and laughed at her own dialogue, "That's probably the most complicated and disturbed mess of an explanation you've ever heard. Ha, oh, sorry Daddy. But hey! I brought what you told me I did so long ago! Ha, remember you told me how I came back in time to you and Mamma in the past and cured you with the antidote I stole from Vanessa in the future when she was still alive? Well, you better be glad I remembered to do it."

Cindress smiled there a pointed tooth grin at her father as a young teen there on the bed and then from her cape pocket pulled a small medicine bottle. Twisting the cap off, she pulled the single capsule from within. She paused a moment to stare at the power over all their lives it held as it glowed in her palm.

"It's kind of both funny and scary to see you like this Daddy... Your castle here is so much bigger than I thought it'd be. You weren't kidding when you said Vlad really went too far when he'd had your first ghost home built. I'm glad you decide later on to move us to a more quaint and simplistic home later, although I must admit, I do love the gothic architecture that he styled everything in for Momma. You know, I don't think I really understand all Uncle Vlad did for you and Momma... You both really needed his care and aid when your Gram and Grandpa Fenton couldn't help any, and especially with Momma's parents losing their lives to Vanessa's wickedness... I used to get upset because I never got to meet them, but, Momma didn't even get to say goodbye to them, show them how she'd been transformed... Being here now, and being old enough to wrap my emotions around all of it, I think I finally understand. Your little girl is growing up Daddy, ha."

Her hand slipped into intangibility and soon released the pill inside her father's stomach, her smile growing with satisfaction as his eyelids began to flutter.

Daniel's glowing greens burst open along with his mouth. His back flew from the bed and urged him forward, immediately into Cindress's arms. Flexing his arms and hands around her tiny body, laughter poured out of his chest. The motion in his eager body moved his hands to cradle her face, and then his lips to kiss her forehead before his voice asked, "Are you_ really _my daughter this time?"

She giggled, "Yes sir, but not yet. Someday soon."

He kissed her forehead again and again. "My precious little girl, huh? Thank you, so, so very much."

"I'm just doing as you'd asked me to, Dad. But, hey, I've got to head back to my time and home now. You can't forget to tell me to come do this when I'm born, okay? Don't screw everything up."

Light and laughter pulled the pair of them close at heart while he tapped a finger playfully on her nose.

"Not a chance." He promised, hugging her tight a last time for several years.

She stood from the bed and turned to leave, calling behind her, "Daddy, I love you, and as much as I'd love to get to know your teenage self when you were just about to begin healing the animosities between the human world and the ghost zone, I need to get out of here before Momma finds you. That's not something I want to see at all, ha! Goodbye for this time and moment, I'll be seeing you soon."

Cindress skittered away down the hall, leaving an awe-stricken Daniel peering after her, and then to his wriggling toes beneath the bed sheets. Within seconds he was on his feet, bursting of strength and energy, down the hall.

"Sam!" He cried in impatient thrill as he sprinted to meet her. "Sam! Samantha! Sam!"

From her study, The Black Amethyst forced her eyes harder onto the poetry in a sweatily grasped book. She reminded herself that his voice was only another illusion, another daydream, that she needed to stay in reality, to let go.

"Sam! My Sam! Where are you?"

The leather bindings of the book hesitantly lowered, allowing her curious eyes to fly from the pages and glue themselves unto the study's door.

Her heart thundered alongside the footsteps that beat down louder as they fell closer down the hallway. Her pupils widened in their focus, brimming soft, lost tears.

"It's not real... It's not real..." She chanted in a whisper to her screaming heart. The door's knob twisted and the door exploded open as she squeezed her eyes to close, the puddles that had brewed on them sliding down her hot cheeks.

"Danny..."

His arms captured her body up from the chair into him, pressing his lips onto her neck, quickly moving them over her flushing flesh. Her arms coiled under his, flexing her fingers into his wild hair, combing her claws through the white locks. His hands gripped under her legs, hoisting them to wrap around his waist. Her hands crept over his abs and then onto his chest, tracing the DP symbol with gentle caress. His mouth met hers. Her mouth opened into his. His eyes sealed, and her eyes opened, both soaking each other in.

Samantha then wrapped her massive wings around them, and there, a smile snuggled between their intertwined lips.

Parting for only a brief moment, they laughed out of perfect joy.

"I promised you I'd always get back up." He wiped away her spilling tears.

"You just had to take so darn long though!" Her nose wrinkled in amusement.

Daniel's ghostly face fell unto seriousness, looking throughout all of their wild journey, looking to the journey's coming, looking into his beautiful beloved, both of them so changed from who they'd been, and yet, both of them continuously in an unstoppable kismet of love.

"We can't always pick the way things turn out, my Samantha. However, someone wise once told me that even though bad things happen doesn't mean we don't have a choice."

"Oh yah?" She smirked at him, a playful puppy wagging her tail once again.

"Yah." His tail wagged back.

"Well, some wise guy told me a little something once, too."

Danny cupped her face in his hands asking, "Really? What was that?"

"He told me, carpe deum, my love."

And they did, for that day, along with each following day that the two spent in their existence.


End file.
